Tuesday, May 14, 2013

A black Labrador Retriever.
A black Labrador Retriever. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I LOST MY BEST FRIEND

Yesterday at 2:30 p.m. I lost my best friend.  She was a beautiful female black lab, almost 14 years old, with brown eyes and a look to melt anyone's heart.  Mollie, loved my wife and me and tolerated very few others.  Her main responsibilities were to love and protect us.  She accomplished those duties with determination!  

We got her from a family in Macon when she was one-year old.  Driving home, she climbed from the back seat of our Jeep Grand Cherokee into my wife's lap in the front seat and into our hearts.  Labs spend their early years being rambunctious, becoming "adults around 5-7 years old.  Mollie was a normal lab in this regard.

Except for nights, she spent most of her early life outside in a kennel or fence.  As she got older, she gradually moved inside our home, spending many hours by the fireplace with or without a fire.

Every night around 9:00 p.m., one of us would say "Ready?"  If she was, she would stand up and walk down our long hall and get into her crate and look anxiously for her bacon treat.  Then, her day was over.

I have an office in our home.  For the last several years, when I was home, Mollie spent many hours curled up close to my desk chair.  When a noise disturbed her, she would softly growl.  If she was at the other end of the house, she would come running to me, letting me know that either someone was at the door or that she needed to go out.

At night, she would stretch out on a small rug by our bed until her bedtime.  

A week ago, she woke us at 4:30 a.m. with nonstop nausea and diarrhea. My wife got her to the vet clinic as soon as they opened.  A day later we found out that she had contracted pancreatitic problems.  Even massive doses of antibiotics didn't turn the tide.  

Yesterday, we and the vet decided she had suffered enough.  Mollie's ashes were scattered today in a memorial garden at the Albany Humane Society.  I'll never have a stronger friend.  I miss her terribly.  Rest in peace, my brown eyed girl...
 
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