Tuesday, February 12, 2008

goodbye's never get easier

today is a really sad day. my dog of 14 years had to be put down today. snickers was a yorkshire terrior and he brought so much joy to everyone who met him.

14 years ago my family decided we wanted to get a little dog. after a bad experience with a yellow lab we thought a smaller dog would be a good way to go. i don't know how they decided on a yorkie but somehow we got in touch with a breeder who had a litter on the way. we purchased snickers before he was even born. we even named him so that the breeder could call him by his name for the first 6 weeks until we got him. the mom's name was kitkat so on our way home from the visit with the breeder i decided that we should name our dog snickers (to keep the candy names in the family). i guess everyone agreed and that's what we decided. on new years eve we got a call from the breeder who told us that the litter was about to be born. 6 weeks later we had our snickers.

somewhere along the way snickers got really attached to me and i to him. the breeder told us that yorkies usually picked one person in the family and kind of stuck by them. that was me. when i started working for my parents in 2000, snickers started coming with me. it stayed that way for the next 6 years. it was so nice to have a little dog running around our business and making people smile. he loved the attention and the treats. i remember a few years ago a lady came into our store and she saw snickers and says, "snickers you changed my life!" i thought she was crazy but then she told us her story. she said she had come into the store about a year earlier, met snickers and got a heart for yorkies. she lived in baltimore and decided to start a yorkie rescue mission for abandoned and abused yorkies. i couldn't believe it. it was so precious and made me love my dog even more.

i was away from home most of 2007 but when i would come home, snickers would welcome me right home. while my other dog daisy took time to warm up to me, snickers recognized me right away. it was so precious... but i guess we just had that bond. over the past couple of months he just wasn't the same anymore. he slept all the time and i knew it wouldn't be much longer. but this past week it got worse. he stopped eating and had trouble walking. then on tuesday night i ended up staying up with him all night. he cried a lot which broke my heart. it was then that i knew he was really in pain.

letting a pet go is so hard. they're always there for you no matter what. they never judge you or talk back. they're always excited to see you and when you need something to hold, they're there. it's sad to me to know that i can't look in his cage and see him sleeping or catch him drinking at his water bowl. i'm so grateful i still have daisy, though. it would have been really hard to come home to no dog at all.

anyways, i don't want this to be sad. i loved snickers so much. he was truly such a good dog and so special to me. my family used to tease me that he was my boyfriend because we spent so much time together. i just loved his company and i think he loved mine. i hope he knows how much he was loved.

i know people say animals don't go to heaven, but that's baloney. there's animals in heaven, so why not our pets? i always said it wouldn't be heaven if snickers wasn't there and i'm sticking to it.

1 comment:

Katie @ Loves of Life said...

He will be missed! xoxox love you