"Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives." - John Galsworthy
My original plan was for this post to be about my two dogs, Allie and Yadi. I was going to channel Charles Dickens' and title it "A Tale of Two Shih Tzus." Then, a sad thing happened over the weekend: we had to make the difficult decision to put the older dog, Allie, to sleep. So, now, I'll just focus on her and write more about Yadi in a future post.
My wife and I got Allie in the spring of 2001, when she was only 8 weeks old. She was so little I could hold her in one hand and she could fit until the coffee table in our family room. At the time, we lived in an apartment and we weren't supposed to have a dog. However, we knew we were moving into a house in about a month, so we rolled the dice and lived like scofflaws for a few weeks. Her bark was so quiet, we doubted anyone would be able to hear it anyway and we were good about taking her out to minimize the chances of accidents on the carpet.
After a few weeks, we moved into our first house and Allie got to enjoy having a fenced-in yard and a neighborhood through which we could take her on walks. We settled into a nice routine, the three of us, and Allie quickly claimed her favorite spot in the house: curled up on the back of the couch like a cat. She also loved curling up on the couch next to my wife, which became more difficult when my wife got pregnant. Her growing belly slowly consumed the spot on the couch where Allie would curl up.
She loved to play fetch, tug of war, and, every so often, she'd get a spurt of energy and go sprinting in circles around the coffee table in the family room - time after time until she'd be out of breath.
One winter, my wife bought her a little winter coat to wear outside when it was cold. She hated that coat! One time, we put it on her and let her out in the backyard so that she could got to the bathroom in the snow. She came back to the door a few minutes later - minus the hated coat. I had to put on my boots and trudge out into the backyard in the snow to find the coat!
All of our lives changed for good when my son was born. Allie sniffed every inch of him when we brought him home from the hospital but soon decided he was no threat. In fact, she soon grew to love my son's mealtimes. Because he would fling food around the kitchen when he was full, she discovered that mealtime for him meant a smorgasboard for her.
The two of them got along well; she never snapped or growled at him, even when he would be a little rougher with her than she'd like.
The following year, we moved again, into a bigger house at almost exactly the same time that my son started walking. Allie had to learn the lay of the land in the new house -- with a bigger yard -- while also learning to deal with a newly mobile toddler.
The years brought more changes, including another kid, but Allie's habits and sweet disposition remained the same. She loved popcorn, sleeping with us, and curling up for a nap on the back of the couch. I also developed a number of nicknames for her, though my personal favorite was "Short Stack" owing to her short, little legs.
When I would get home from work, Allie would always be there to greet me. She'd bark at me until I'd pick her up and then she'd howl and "talk" to me as I held her and petted her. There was always something comforting in getting greeted like that. During the winter, you could count on Allie to snuggle up next to you on the couch. During the summer, you could always count on her sitting out on the deck with me while I cooked something on the barbecue grill. That constant companionship was always wonderfully reassuring.
Over the years, she battled through some health problems - a bulging disc in her back that would flare up from time to time and, most recently, some eye problems that are common in shih tzus. Those eye problems led to the removal of one of her eyes late last summer. In recent weeks, we noticed similar problems with her other eye and, this weekend, she was clearly in discomfort. We believe she had gone blind in her remaining eye. Her quality of life was rapidly diminishing, so we made the difficult decision to put her to sleep. She was almost 15 years old and she'd had a good, long life. We decided to allow her to peacefully move on to a better place rather than suffer any more in this one.
We all went to the vet's office on Saturday and said our final good byes. There were a lot of tears shed, but we all felt like we were making the right decision. As difficult as it was to say goodbye to Allie, the alternative of watching her suffer was even worse.
While Allie has gone on to chase squirrels in a better place, we're left with the fond memories of a sweet, gentle dog who enriched our lives for nearly 15 years. We're forever grateful for the time we had her. When we got her, my wife and I had been married for a year, had no kids and we lived in an apartment. When she left us, my wife and I have been married for almost 16 years, we're on our second house, we have two kids and a second dog. Our lives changed immeasurably during her time with us. Many things changed, but the one constant was my sweet Short Stack Girl sleeping on the back of the couch.
Farewell, Allie. Thanks for loving us unconditionally and making our little corner of the world a better place. I can only hope we made you as happy as you made us.
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