Two of our dearly departed dogs have been at the back of my mind all week. They were full siblings from two different litters, and two dates this week are significant.
Yesterday, March 18, would have been Heidi’s “sweet 16.” For the most part, it is unusual for a Rottweiler to get very far into the ‘teen years, but we lost Heidi slightly before her time at age nine years, nine months. She was my “heart” dog and even though she has been gone for over six years now, I still think of her often, especially when training my others. My husband had many dogs throughout his life, but Heidi was my very first dog. She was my “experimental” dog and I probably made my worst training missteps with her. She bounced back from it all, and we finally found her calling as a therapy dog well into her middle years. She was extremely people-friendly, almost to a fault. Or at least I thought it was a fault because she even liked jagoffs that I hated. But it made her the perfect candidate for therapy work. Her career was not long, but we both enjoyed visiting mentally and physically challenged young adults at some of Little City’s group homes. It was perhaps the most rewarding thing I have ever done, with or without a dog.
And Tuesday was the fourth anniversary of the sad day that Oscar went to join his siblings at the Rainbow Bridge. Through our tears, we said that it was because he didn’t want to miss Heidi’s birthday there, and smiled at the thought of the “twins” being together again. We always called them the “twins” even though they were not twins at all. They were full siblings, one from a planned litter and one from an “oops” litter from the same parents. Oscar was the very last one of our original four-member Rottweiler wrecking crew to leave us at age eleven years, five months. He was a big dog, at the top end of the standard for male Rottweilers, so I never felt really comfortable doing much training and competing with him. He always felt that his job was just to watch over me. The others always wanted to be doing something, even when they got a bit older. Oscar was happy just to hang out with me.
I miss them both to this day, and always will.
(NaBloPoMo | March ’10: 19 of 31)