Hello, dear friends.
It is with a heavy heart that I type this blog post. I'm not even sure exactly how or what to say except that we had to have Riley, our sweet doggie boy, put down this evening. He was fine when he first got up (I even tweeted about the sloppy kiss he left on my cheek this morning) but as the morning progressed, he started acting like he was really sick and in pain. We thought maybe he would improve (I was on the phone repeatedly with Bart about him), but by this afternoon after sitting with him most of the day, he was definitely not better. I was starting to be really concerned so we called our vet at the animal hospital and they squeezed him in for an apmt. Once there, it didn't take them long at all to tell us that his stomach had somehow (they don't know how) flipped on itself and they sent us immediately to the surgery center up the street. Once there, they put him on an iv and took x-rays in preparation for the surgery. The doctor came in and said that the surgery would be thousands of dollars and even more if he had any complications whatsoever and wasn't able to come home after 1 day. She said there was no guarantee that he'd come thru the surgery or that his stomach wasn't already damaged beyond repair, and that perhaps once they got in there, they'd also find some other larger problem that was perhaps what caused the stomach issue in the first place (like maybe a tumor or something). We had to make the agonizing decision to have him put down. He was already 11 years old and she said his breed's life expectancy is only 10 years so he's already out-lived that.
It was awful....he was fine this morning and gone this evening. Totally healthy yesterday and gone today. Bart came and met me at the hospital and we got to spend a bit of time with him to say goodbye and then we were with him when they put him down. We've gone back and forth between sobbing and just feeling very numb. It all just happened so fast.
He was our little shadow. He followed me around all day every day. If I was working in the studio, he was usually underfoot....it was rare that he wasn't in the same room as us.
I'm so sorry to post something so sad here.....I know this blog is usually a pretty happy place to visit, however more than just being happy, this place.....my little home on the internet, is a very REAL place....where real life happens.....and sometimes life can be tough.
For those of you that pray, Bart and I would GREATLY appreciate your prayers as we adjust to a new normal around here. Both of our daily routines will be completely different without our sweet baby to take care of each day. We will miss him SEVERELY.......I can't tell you how sweet he's been. Such a good boy. I'm so grateful for the time we had with him. I'm so thankful for the blessing he was to us both. We loved him dearly and I'm grateful that God saw fit to allow us to care for him his entire life.
I don't know if I ever told you, but we've had him since the day he was born. It's kind of a long story so I'll give you the abbreviated version. Bart and I were engaged, I was living with my friend Tosha and she came home with a stray that had been found. She couldn't not take care of that sweet dog, so she named her Honey and we kept her. Fast forward, Honey got pregnant, ended up with a skin disease and had to be put down shortly after giving birth to the puppies. I took over with the 6 puppies, bottle-feeding them, taking them in the shower with me every single day and holding their tiny little puppy bodies under the water to rinse them off after I'd sudsed them up....in short, I fell in love with them. I batted my own puppy dog eyes at my sweet then-fiance and asked him if we could keep one. Bartley loves me a lot and so he said yes. We watched them all for a few more weeks, seeing how they acted as their little puppy personalities developed and eventually we chose the one we wanted to keep......and we named him Riley.
Bart fenced off part of our massive back yard so Riley baby would have a place to run in and he brought Riley baby home to live with him when he was about 8 or 10 weeks old. Riley and Bartley lived here together for the next year while we were engaged and once we were married, I moved in with "my boys". It didn't take long for Bart to fall in love with Riley just as much as I had. Those two had a lot of bonding time when Riley was a baby and they lived here together. Riley has been a daddy's boy for a long time now.
The Papertrey Countdown starts tomorrow....technically tonight at midnight EST....my first post is already scheduled and ready to go, since I was typing it up today while sitting with my boy and praying that he'd be ok. Anyway, the point is that with the Countdown starting tomorrow, I wanted to let you know about Riley tonight before we get back into the fun of the Countdown. And I didn't want to interrupt the Countdown with such a sad post as this.
Thank you all so much for listening and for caring. It's been very therapeutic just writing all of this out.
much love,
