Since we said goodbye to Bear in December, 2023, it feels like we have said too many goodbyes to the 4-legged companions in our lives: to Ditto, our sweet twenty year old cat, to Ichabod, our five year old “companion” goat, and last week to Bella, our beloved thirteen year old goldendoodle.
Ditto’s mother, Patches, adopted us in 2004, bringing with her a one year old son, Salem. Shortly after moving into our home, she gifted us with 4 kittens. We kept two of them, Ditto and Rani. Ditto was the last survivor of those 4 cats, and we said goodbye to her this summer. Although saying goodbye is never easy, she was very old, and over the past year or two she had slowly removed herself from our lives, interacting with us less and less. Although she was eating, she was losing weight, slowly dropping to just over half of her healthy weight. So, when the vet suggested that it was time to let her go, I had to admit she was right.
Ichabod (Icky) came to us with his sister Isadora (Izzie) in the Spring of 2020, just as the country shut down for COVID. We bought him as a companion goat for Izzie, however, his sweet personality made him a favorite of all our farm visitors and a companion to all of us, so it was heart breaking to say goodbye to him. At 5 years old, he was still a relatively young goat. His passing was unexpected, and his decline was rapid. He went from walking normally, to stumbling to basically paralyzed over the course of 24 hours. The presumed cause of his decline was a deer pathogen called meningeal worm, which doesn’t seem to cause any problems when infecting deer, but invades the brain when it infects goats. We tried treatment, but when he didn’t improve, the only thing to do was to let him go. Five years ago, if you had told me that I would hold a goat’s head in my lap, speak soft, reassuring words to him, and cry while the vet released him from his paralyzed body, I might have told you that you were crazy. But that was before I had goats, and realized just how social and loving they are. One can’t help but love them back.
But of the three losses, losing Bella was the hardest. She joined us in 2012, as a one year old rescue. She was being rehomed by a family that had bought three puppies the prior year, as Christmas gifts for their children. As best we can tell, she spent the first year of her life primarily in a back yard run and a mudroom at the back of their house, and appeared to have been aggressively punished for potty accidents and who knows what else. She was an unhappy, frightened girl when she arrived. Even walking close to her when she was laying down on the floor had her jumping up and out of the way, as if she expected to be kicked. And at first, despite hours of walking with her on her leash, she would not pee or poop in front of us, choosing to hide in another room once we were home, go on the floor, and then cower in a corner.
Over time, with quietly and calmly cleaning up inside messes, allowing her to use the pool deck for her bathroom (the only part of our Springfield yard with a physical fence, where we could safely leave her alone outside), and lots of positive reinforcement for outside success, we were able to overcome that challenge. And fortunately, she quickly bonded with Gary, and he became the center of her human world. The rest of us were meager substitutes when he was not around. But with time she came to trust and love all of us. It was easy to love her back, and it was a joy to see her happy, especially when she did her twirling happy dance.
Bear played a huge role in helping her settle into life with our family. He was her dog security blanket and her constant companion for 11 years. He was her model of how to relax, enjoy life, meet people, and just be a dog. Bella didn’t know how to play when she came to us, but Bear patiently taught her to play with him. She never quite got the hang of it with any other dog. Given her rough start, and the time it took her to adjust to our home, one might have thought that the move to the farm would be unsettling for her, but it turned out to be the best thing that we could have done for her. She found her confidence here, really blossomed, and became an avid hunter, especially of ground hogs.
When Bear passed, Bella stopped eating. Thinking we all needed another dog companion, we adopted Willow. Maybe not the best plan, given the age difference and Willow’s high energy personality. Bella just looked at us like “Now what have you done??????” The next 2 months didn’t go well. Bella lost about a quarter of her body weight, and it looked like we were going to lose her hard on the heels of saying goodbye to Bear. But thanks to the right combination of medication, and an endless supply of venison donated by all of our hunter friends, we finally got Bella eating again, and she regained her lost weight. She stayed with us for almost another year, every day of which was a gift. She even came to appreciate Willow a bit. But over the last few months, as she continued to age, degenerative changes in her spine caused her hind end to start to fail her. As we watched her decline, we struggled with how we would know it was time to let her go. A friend and fellow dog owner assured us she would let us know. Last week she did just that, showing us without doubt that keeping her with us was no longer an act of kindness. So, we said goodbye. We will miss her terribly, but we find comfort knowing that she is now free of the body that was failing her, back with her very best friend, Bear, and able to dance happy twirls again.
❤️🫂way too many goodbyes.