We had to have a few new rules after Mr Lincoln healed from his ACL & Meniscal Repair.

We never, EVER wanted to go through that again and the only way we could possibly have any control over that was to not encourage jumping.

He hadn’t been able to jump as high as the bed for a few years but oh how he loved that bed.  

It must have felt so good to his little aging arthritic bones to just sink into that mattress.

Being Mr Lincoln, he wasn’t about to accept no more bed-sleeping.

He stood up on his two back feet at the side of our bed each nite and reached out to our arms with his loooong claws and pulled.  

We tried to ignore him but it was a rare happening that Mr Lincoln was ever ignored.  

It just didn’t happen.

Eventually, one of us would get out of bed and lift him up.

But, he had nighttime behavior.

When he was younger and could jump up onto the bed himself, he’d lie down and roll side to side and growl.  

He seemed to be getting his spot ready like a big, roly-poly bear.

He’d stand up and then with no warning, he’d drop smack down in a deep sleep.  

Dog Narcolepsy?

Sometimes we wondered.  

In his later years, once he was lifted up to the bed, he went right to his favorite spot.

He lied on his back, spread out and snored.

But, sometime in the middle of every night, he’d jump off the bed to use his private entrance doggie-door to water a tree or just check his domain for trespassers.

Then he’d come inside and curl-up in his dog bed alongside LooLoo and sleep til morning.

We couldn’t let him do that anymore.  

If he jumped and re-injured his leg, well…..no words!!

But, we felt sorry for him.

Mr Lincoln loved sleeping on our bed.

So we invented a creation.

We put a leash on him and wrapped it around our arms.  

We slept that way.  

We took turns.

And, he’d wake us up when he moved and wanted down.

It worked…..for Mr Lincoln!

Next we made a much longer leash and tied one end up at the head of the bed.  

It allowed him to get up, stand up, move, but not enough room to get to the edge and jump off.

And so it went until one day he just stopped wanting to get up on our bed.

We began noticing lots of little changes in Linkie over the past year.

He slept more and ate less.

ATE LESS?  

We knew what was coming.

He got a horrible, horrible yeast infection between his toes that took a month to heal. (Yep…..$$$ cha-ching, cha-ching.)

2018 was the year our family said good-bye to 3 furry-four-legged relatives.  

“Eddie Spaghetti” left first after battling Diabetes for a long, hard year.  Eddie dealt with ear pokes and Insulin injections ‘til he just got tired of it all.

Then Rubee-Jean who since her beginning has been plagued with big problems like seizures.  

Rubee-Jean weighed only a couple pounds but she was tough and fought for a long time.

And then our sweet, mischievous, one-of-a-kind, Lincoln.

Three.

On Friday, September 14th, Linkie was fine and then…..he wasn’t.

I’ve read often that our pets do NOT want us to know when something is wrong.  

They hide it. 

They want us to always feel like everything is fine.  

Selfless heroes, loving us so much that they hide their hurts.

We were leaving for a week at the Ocean the next morning.  

Our bags were packed.

We had a bit of errand-running to do and it was decent enough weather that our two furries could come with us and wait in the car.

I had been talking to and playing with Mr Lincoln earlier in the morning and then he’d gone by his spot at the front door to take a little nap.

I gave “our” whistle to signal to him we were gonna go for a ride.

He didn’t move.  

He ALWAYS responded to my whistle.

It scared me.

Lobo saw him lying motionless so got down on the floor next to him and shook him.

His eyes opened but still he didn’t move.

Lobo picked him up to put him on all four feet but his back two legs wouldn’t hold him.  

He slipped down.

He put his sweet head up, looked Lobo smack in the eyes down to his heart and soul and sent a message.

We both saw it.

Lobo scooped him up and we raced the 5 minutes down the street to our vet.

He was examined and an ultra sound was done.  

The vet could see nothing other than the lethargy and inability to stand.

My sweet boy who always loved nosing around the vets office, lie still on the table.

I wanted to scream ……”LINKIE STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!”

The vet suggested trying some IV fluids, maybe that would perk him up.

WHATEVER.

ANYTHING.

Just fix my boy!

We agreed to the IV fluids.

We went home to wait for the call that he was all better and we could bring him home.

The call came within an hour of leaving him.

He had failed IV therapy.

On further exam, their testing revealed 4 major problems.

MAJOR!

The vet wanted to do more testing…..blood work and a few other tests.

And WHY?

What was it gonna change?

Nothing!

NO.

We knew it was time to let our boy go.

We drove those 5 minutes down the road much more slowly than we had an hour earlier.

We didn’t talk.

The three of us, Lobo, LooLoo and I, were led into the room where my boy was lying still.  

We wrapped him in a shirt of Lobo’s so he’d feel safe and not afraid for his journey.

We held him.

We thanked him.

We instructed him to find all his relatives on the other side of that Rainbow Bridge.

We hugged him.

We kissed him.

LooLoo stood up on her two hind legs and just looked at him, she knew.

Her happy tail went down in that moment and didn’t wag for weeks.

He lifted his sweet head up, looked at us and eye to eye, heart to heart and the four of us said good-bye.

His look told us he was ready.

We let go and left with broken hearts.

And then we were three.

We used to joke in his beginning that he was such a buggar that when his final time arrived…..we’d high-five.

We didn’t.

We went home and cried from our hearts breaking.

We decided not to cancel our ocean week.

Being at the Pacific Ocean was the best way to begin the process of working through our grief.

Like the waves that rolled in and out, so did our heart pain.

When we returned home, there was a small box in the mail from our vet.  

We knew it was his little foot print saved forever in plaster.

To this day, I’ve been unable to look at it.

Lobo says it’s beautiful and so recognizable Linkie.

Cards, E-mails and Facebook messages arrived from family and many, many friends who have gone through such a loss and understood.

Next was the beautiful carved box with my boys ashes.  

I couldn’t go with Lobo to get him.

I waited at the door.

Lobo carried him inside, kinda tucked so lovingly in his arms.

And we were so sad.

LooLoo suffered the loss most.  

She carried his favorite toys from room to room looking for him.

When she heard his name mentioned, she jumped up from wherever she was and began running through the house looking for him, I’m sure.

She didn’t eat and her tail didn’t wag.

She was lost.  

Linkie was her everything.

We’ll never stop missing him.

We’ll just learn to accept and adjust.

We’ll never watch and laugh as he and LooLoo play tug-of-war with a few of their toys that they never learned to share.

He’ll never come to Lobo with a particular look on his face and speaking with his eyes, ask for help because LooLoo had her new toy and his too.

We’ll never again see his antics when he wanted a toy LooLoo had.

Clever little buggar that he was.

And, we’ll NEVER EVER walk into the kitchen again with a Linkie escort in hopes that we’d open the cupboard door that held all his treats.

Now, the unescorted walk into the kitchen is lonely.

My hope is that in sharing my story with you my reader-friends, you enjoyed it and and parts made you laugh because that was his job…..to make us laugh.

I know that one day we WILL laugh again when we remember but for now, I just miss……………

                           

THAT FACE.

Thank you for reading my story, it was my therapy.