A Man(Gamer)'s Best Friend passes on.....
By
Barata,
Posted on: 2009-06-19 21:24 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Latest semi update. Well, its the 4th of July, my former wonderful pup's birthday, and my depressed butt has to work today. Yay. Well, in related note, I'm thinking about checking out one of the local Guiding Eyes For the Blind centers in my area, since I've been told a good chance at getting a fairly well trained Lab from one of them, one of the ones that don't make the cut to be seeing eye dogs, too inquisitive, friendly and going over to people, etc. Of course, wouldn't you know it, I put in a notice at my job requesting a 10-11 day vacation, partially cause I'm gonna kill one of our lemming-like customers, and partially because this way I'll be home enough to acclimate the dog if/when we get him/her to the house, yard, family, etc, etc. Of course, now things have come up at my job, and now not only may I not be able to take the vacation, I might have to pull 6/7 day work-weeks. Yeah....my tax refund is looking like a "chill out the rest of the summer minus a job" nest egg more and more right now. So, post more fun/cute stories on your pets, I'm too bummed to hear any more people's sadness.
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The vet did a necrospy and told us he died from cancer. What was mind blowing was that 1 week prior to his death we just had a doggie physical and he was rated in top health!
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The thing with cancer is...they have to test specifically for it and do all these different blood labs. A normal check wont detect cancer. We thought my Rascal (lost him on April 8th this year) was having urinary issues and that's what the vet confrimed it as. He got better and better and then dropped like a stone to the bottom of a pond.
We couldn't figure out what was wrong and finally we did some extensive blood labs on him. It came back as Leukemia. nothing else it could have been. Normal cats white count is 10,000 and Rascals was almost 300,000. He died the very next day after cancer was confirmed.
If we had caught it a year ago or more, we could have done something. But that cat never let on that he had any sort of problem until a few days before it took him.
Its not even been 3 full months since I lost him, but I still can't think of him without crying...as I am doing now. 
Wish there was a better way to test for this crap. Cancer's been tearing apart my friends and family since 1992. To give you the total body count, I've lost count, but I'm pretty sure I'm just about out of fingers and toes to count on for it.
Yikes. Yeah a friend of mine ... his family and in particular his kids are at such genetic risk. Both sides of the kids families are just hit with it.
Only thing we can really do is not do the stupid stuff that we KNOW is bad, right? 
And, stay happy.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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Hey Erics im very sorry about the loss of Liberty. I go into a shutdown mode whenever i loose a pet. Alot of people dont get the fact that this being is very much your child and the hurt is the same. I have my cat Loki in my arms and we both send ya some love and calming thoughts in your time of need. May the Goddess bless Liberty with peace and eternal joy.
Thanks, while you're at it, bless me with a vacation so that if I get a new dog, I can be home enough for a while to acclimate the little bugger to my family and home.
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Any more thoughts, pet stories, funny or sad? I don't want this thread to die, not just yet.
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Here's Simone's story. (This is a write-up I did for someone who asked about keeping a feral puppy, hence the emphasis on the challenges.)
In February 2007, our nephew found a completely wild, starving American Pit Bull Terrier puppy, about six months old, in the streets of a rural town. At first he took the little dog to his grandmother, my wife's mom, but she wasn't able to keep up with the pup, and she was due in the hospital for cancer surgery (she's currently okay after treatment, fingers crossed!). The vet informed her that the law requires stray dogs to be turned over to the animal control people in case they're claimed, so the disoriented pup, who did not know how to interact with people or other dogs, was turned over to the shelter for the required six days.
Nationwide, the odds of a pit bull being adopted from a county shelter are 1 in 600, I read; that includes the completely perfect ones. Certainly the odds were even worse for this ragged, staring little foundling with poor bite inhibition.
We had no significant experience with pit bulls. The pup would need to be trained and exercised with a dedication we had not yet had to exert for any of our other animals: she wasn't housetrained at all, she expressed herself with her increasingly powerful teeth, she didn't recognize any dominance or submission cues in other dogs, she didn't respond to human touch, she didn't respond to treats, and wasn't particularly interested in food or toys. I think shed been raised in isolation.
In short, she would be a ton of work with uncertain results. We knew almost nothing about pit bulls except what we read in the news. I did not especially find the idea of a pit bull attractive, and we had certainly not planned on another dog in our small condo...and our resident dog was dog-aggressive. Every rational indication was against going back to the shelter and claiming her. My wife said to me, "Can we do this without totally changing our lifestyle?" and the answer was NO, without a doubt.
But there was no one else. No one was going to step up for this little thing.
To make it seem possible at all, I told myself we would be temporary foster parents.
We brought her home, and named her Simone, because it seemed like a sophisticated name for a little uneducated rural pit bull.
Simone barely interacted with people -- mostly she chewed things (including me!) and stared wide-eyed at everything. The vet thinks she was six months old, and her behavior seemed (to my admittedly out-of-practice eye) to be behind the curve, as if she was neglected and was only starting to learn things other puppies learned months ago. For example, puppies learn bite inhibition from their littermates.
We kept her in the kitchen behind a baby gate, and (when we werent home) in a crate, while trying to housetrain her.
One secret to taming a feral animal is just to be present. Sitting in the kitchen with her, passively keeping her company for long stretches of time, seemed to calm her...but I got sore, I got tired, I got bored. Boredom is a powerful tool for taming animals, however -- eventually she started taking an interest in me; at first falling asleep in my lap, then hanging out near me while doing her own thing, and finally staring at me with the eternal question, What now? What should I do? and, once I had her attention, it became possible to start teaching her.
I wasnt by any means an expert on how to housetrain. But I was (and remain) committed to positive reinforcement training, so I had to come up with something. My homemade solution was that when she peed in the house, Id dip a paper towel in it, and take her and the towel outside and put the towel in the grass, make sure she sniffed it (no nose-rubbing or scolding), then praise her. And of course take her out early and often, every two hours at minimum.
It worked really well! She learned quickly, and hasn't had an accident since she was sick in early May (2007).
Simone had puppy energy to burn. Going out frequently is one key to housetraining, too -- so up and out with the dog became the force that drove me. She wanted to run up and down the sidewalk in the frigid spring weather we had, even in snow and ice, so I ran up and down the slick sidewalk at all hours of the evening and night, trying not to fall. I struggled to keep up, losing 18 pounds that spring.
I made it a priority to work on her bite inhibition she wasnt malicious, but she was getting stronger, and seemed unaware that grinding away on Daddy could hurt him. And, of course, a biting adult dog is intolerable. Because my instinct is to be positive, not punitive, I looked on the Internet for positive bite inhibition training methods. I let her bite my hand and then Id yelp like a puppy and turn away and stop playing. Biting ends the social interaction! By that point she hated being ignored, and my turning away riveted her attention on what she could do to get my attention back. We worked on bite inhibition over and over, and to my mild surprise it started to work pretty quickly. All I had to do was willingly get munched on by the pit bull who didnt know her own bite strength. The things we do for love, eh?
All this extra effort seemed less of a burden because we thought wed wind up rehoming her -- it felt more like a temporary displacement I was willing to endure to give her a better chance at being adoptable. And she was a huge disruption in our lives. We even got so far as dropping her off for a weekend trial visit with someone we thought would adopt her! He seemed to really like her, and seemed like a nice guy. When he called the next day and said she was too wild, and asked us to come get her, I was frustrated -- but secretly, my heart leaped in my chest.
Some time later my wife gently asked me if she should stop listing Simone on adoption websites. Somewhat crossly, I asked her why. You look like you want to keep her, she said. Does it show? I foolishly asked.
And here we are.
Simone's training has been very successful. I found a great positive trainer who works with the natural behaviors of the dogs, and really loves pit bulls -- she volunteers time at a pit rescue. I also found something that motivates Simone the humble, unsalted, roasted peanut, of all things. Simone has completed two six-week classes so far, and had one private session. Simone responded very well to clicker training. She's still a bit willful when she wants to walk one way and I want to walk the other, but she knows a lot of behaviors and she was the star of the class at the "here!" and "leave it!" commands.
So far, Simone's shown no dog aggression at all -- she's eager to greet other dogs, and plays with them quite happily. She's been knocked down by another dog, while running with him, repeatedly, and just bounces back up for more, or turns away and walks off. Other dogs can take a toy or food from her without her doing anything other than stare after them, as if to say, "why'd you do that?"
Of course she's become a daddy's girl. She follows me everywhere. Even though I don't always feel like it, and have lots of other pets who need time (we have something of a menagerie), I give Simone as much time as I can, because I'm all she has.
Ahem...and because I'm in love.
Simone
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
AWWWWWW!
What an awesome story, and kudos to you for sticking with her. The overinflated stories of pit bulls in the media really make me angry - plenty of smaller, supposedly less aggressive dogs are way more nasty and bite far more often than these when they're properly trained, just like any dog.
It really is amazing that you had a blank slate like that to work with, too. I've been drawing a lot of wolves lately and so have had access to a lot of references - their behaviors are muted or even outright cancelled in many dogs. But to have one that just *never* learned certain things you'd expect... It's both tragic and amazing that she responded so well.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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The pet stories from our pets are short, but each of them came to us from being unwanted...
The oldest we have is a Skiperke (sp?) and beagle mix. She was originally a husband's gift to his wife (no idea who the people were) for Christmas. As soon as the wife saw her, she didn't want her. My husband, then just a friend, adopted the little black puppy. The puppy came to be known as Butters, and, even though she didn't like me when I moved in with my husband at first (can we say chewed up bras?), she is now almost 7 years old and and still kickin'.
On to the cat. My husband was moving furniture for a used furniture store and a customer who sold all their furniture to the store was moving. Her cat had a litter of kittens who had all been adopted, save for the one faded orange one with extra toes. She was planning on dropping him off at the local animal shelter because she couldn't take any animals with her. I got a call that day from him, telling me to expect a surprise when he got home. When he arrived, he handed me a little scrawny kitten...and I immediately fell in love with him. He became Lemmiwinks, and is the most spoiled 13 pound cat I've ever seen.
Last, but not least, is the most recent addition. I was really wanting to get a dog and was thinking about going to the animal shelter to get one. My husband told me no, that my dog will come to me when we're needed. I pouted, but understood. A few weeks later, a friend called and said two puppies had been abandoned on a neighbor's doorstep, and asked if we would like one. We told them we wanted the girl, and the next day was given the little black ball of puppy that would come to be known as Gur.
These three animals have become our children. I couldn't have asked for a more eccentric group of house pets.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." --Paul Beatty
Altaholic since '05, 0 months sober
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My dog, Liberty, passed away today, on my birthday of all days. She'd often sit in the room where I played online, watch TV, play console games, etc, either with head on my leg, or just hoping I'd drop her some potato chips. She was 2 weeks short of being 10 years old, her birthday being July 4, 1999, hence her name. If you have pets, right now, go give them a hug, a pet, a treat/cookie, whatever, and love that you have them now, because the next time you drop some potato chips, and no one comes running in to munch them off the floor, your heart, like mine, will feel that much more broken.
[image]http://cheezburger.com/view.aspx?ciid=4482586&vk=2yZ%2fQidCJNqonYv4tF Fx8PIR1wBhlZQF9EMMWQ0E8esxkC7LQ4Q3%2fcPg2b6nsReX[/image]
thats the link to a pic of her
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For the dog. *salute*
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::cant stop crying after reading that:::
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Let me tell you about Georgie. We got him as a puppy. He was the one from a litter of 4 other cocker spaniels that no one wanted. Around 7 months old he was kicked by our horse and had his back broken. But he recovered from that! He had cronic ear problems that finally resulted in a $5000 surgery (more than we could aford) that left him completely deaf. But he took that in stride, and his ability to sense where we were by smell and vibrations in the floor made it hard to tell he couldn't hear. And I never stopped talking to him. I think he could actually read my lips.
Endlessly curious, around age 10 he was bit on the nose by a baby rattle snake that slithered into our back yard when we poked his nose in to sniff it. Did you know the treatment for rattle snake bite costs $500 bucks! But we paid it.
Around age 14 on valentines day a couple years ago we finally had to take Georgie to the vet and have him put to sleep. He had been in a lot of pain for the last couple years. But you can't ask your pet where it hurts. It was frustrating trying to treat his pain. But he took it in stride, all pets do, and that puppy gleam never left his eyes. My husband and I both had our hands on him when he was put to sleep, and I felt him stop breathing. But he was at peace as he lay there, ready to die I'm sure of it. He also knew that the time had come to move on. So much dignity I had never seen in any man.
This thread has made me shed many tears. Not bad tears, tears of the joys now gone. But I wouldn't have had it any other way.
I guess I'm even more depressed because, due to my crappy over-worked job, I dont even have the time to go to a rescue shelter, etc, and try to find a new dog to love. Its gotten to the point that any customers come by my store with their dog, I will GO OUTSIDE, petting the like of their dog, ignoring anyone inside my job. Thats how bummed/depressed I am now. That and my friend there got fired for making one mistake in 3 years.
That's mean. Don't stress yourself out - and you should explain to your boss if you can, that your mental health and ability to perform your job are being hindered. You need time off. Better that they give you a day or so right now, instead of having you unable to work later.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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Except I wasnt looking for a day or two, I was looking for like 10-11 days. My boss took two weeks off to help her daughter with her newborn baby. Guess what, I helped for TWO months with my sister staying with my family and her 6 month old while her husband was away. And the last day they were at my house was when Liberty died, so, small miracle she was there, and I didnt come home blind from work and find my pooch dead. And then my friend got hurt at work, took 11 days in Myrtle Beach, comes back, and gets fired. So now I is f'd, sans lube. So, I'm having a talk on Friday, and if it goes south, well, I'll have plenty of free time real quick. Cause my heart breaks a bit more every time I come into my house, and she's not at the top of the stairs with a look that says "hi" and "got potato chips for me?". BTW, if anyone wonders more why I harp on this, I've only ever had 2 pets in my life, my cat's still alive, Liberty was my first dog. And having her for 1/3rd my life.
Continuing note: Looking on every pet finder program I can think of online, of course, most of the dogs of the kinds I'm looking for are tending to be somewhere in bumblescrew, conneticut, and I'm in southern NY.
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BTW, if anyone wonders more why I harp on this, I've only ever had 2 pets in my life, my cat's still alive, Liberty was my first dog. And having her for 1/3rd my life.
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Trust me, it's not like you build up an immunity to losing a loved companion. Losing a good pet is going to hurt because of the love and caring, and because you miss him or her, not just because of the first or twenty-first time.
Liberty sounds like a great companion. That almost certainly means you did a great job loving her and caring for her. Take comfort in that -- that's all we can really do for each other, dogs or humans.
There won't be another Liberty, but you will find another friend worthy of your efforts if you look.
Peace to you and yours.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Well, I'm gonna have more time to look for a new dog now, cause, since my idiot boss jumped down my throat for the last time, I'm giving notice on Monday, hence freeing up my schedule come late this month, to go find a new puppy to give happiness and chewtoys too. Maybe sum hot dogz 2.
*whew*.... Well, good luck with that. Don't burn too much of the bridge, but take the time you need.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
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You have my deepest and most sincere condolences. What a beautiful Lab and I can only say that eventually the pain of losing her will subside and you'll get over it. In my family we've had 4 dogs. The first was a Lab/Collie named Socks (she had white fur on all four paws and the rest of her coat was black) and she was a completely stupid dog. I mean she was so stupid that she ran away from us during the dead of winter and froze to death in the woods behind our house
Our second dog was one of our best. Her name was Money Penny (yes after James Bond secretary) and she was a German Shepherd/Border Collie and a loyal and loving dog with a FIERCE attitude when it came to protecting her family that we had to keep her locked up whenever company came because she would attack anyone not a family member or known friend. She lived to be 13 years old and finally we had to put her down because of compounding medical problems that were making her life unbearable.
After her we had a wonderful German Shepherd/Boxer and her name was Penny (named in memory of our last dog). She also was a fiercely loyal dog and so lovable and great with my niece and nephew. Her mother the Shepherd though was one of those long hair GS and as such she use to shed TONS of hair and we had to pay a small fortune every month to have her shaved down to the stubble at the cost of almost 100 dollars and then do it again in a little over 1 month later 
Our newest dog is a GORGEOUS White German Shepherd/Golden Lab named Snowie. She has white fur and eyelashes but a stripe of stiff golden hair down her back and little patches on her paws. She's a beautiful dog and at 7 month old already huge. She's very lovable and friendly but VERY hard headed and SMART. She can figure out problems in no time flat and seeing her work out a problem is so amazing.
That's the great thing about pets though. You can be a serial killer or a mugger in real life but as long as you give a pet love and good food they will love you and be loyal to you until the day they die. In time I would consider getting another dog to replace the one you lost. After Penny died we waited a year before we considered getting another dog and after searching and giving up find the perfect dog for our family. One day the phone rang and a breeder we had left a message with on their webpage contacted us and told us they had a litter of 8 puppies that were sired by a pure breed white German Shepherd father and pure breed golden Lab. When we got there we found out that all the puppies were gone except 1 female that no one wanted. She was curled up in a ball in the corner of her pen totally silent and looking miserable. They told us that after her brothers and sisters were taken away she had gone into a deep depression and not barked or played with any other puppies in over 6 weeks. We took her in and now 7 months later she is a piece of work full of piss and vinegar and totally in love with our family.
Time will heal your wounds and when your ready get another dog and that hole in your heart will be filled again
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The shining world of the seven systems. On the continent of Wild Endeavour. In the mountains of Solace and Solitude there stood the Citadel of the Time Lords. The oldest and most mightiest race in the Universe. Sworn never to interfere. Only watch...[/SIZE][/B]
*hugs*
I know what you are going through, when I lost my dog, it was the most upset I've ever been in my life. Cried all morning, all afternoon too. :/
Try and remember the good times. You obviously treated her well and she had a good life. In that respect, it is to be celebrated. Perhaps in time to come, you will come to realise that. *hugs again*
Thanks. I need more hugs because A: Liberty's ashes are ready to be picked up, and B: Two pics in a row at ihasahotdog.com are of Black Labs. Well, I give notice at my job today, freeing me up in just under two weeks to start looking for a new dog.
And its done. Notice is given, time to look for a new doggy, whilst looking at ihasahotdog.com, seeing two pics of black Labs in a row, cue blurry vision. Frelling dogs are all a state away from me.
Yeah, I cant trust vets anymore around here. "Oh yeah, she's got a non-cancerous tumor near her heart, a piece broke off and we had to drain off some fluid, but as long as she's less active nothing bad should happen again for a while!" Yeah, and less than a month later....