by Brendan Cahoon
I lost a friend yesterday.
On Friday, January 30, 1998, I put Cory to sleep. He was 14.
While driving past the local SPCA, we decided to stop and look at the animals.
I still don't know what made me do it, but I wanted to just look. We started
with the cats (my girlfreinds a cat lover) but I am allergic so could not spend
much time with them. Next were the puppies. Not too many, which is probably a
good thing. Then we started looking at adult dogs. In the second to last
occupied cage there were two dogs. One kept growling at us, but the other one
looked like a sheltie. Now, I have never owned a dog, so I don't know what I
was thinking when we asked to see the sheltie. As we sat there petting him, we
found out his name was Cory. He was 8 years old and, suppossedly, an ex-show
dog. You wouldn't know it by his condition. His fur was matted, he had ear
mites, and his teeth were green. The constant pleading by my girlfreind
convinced me to take him home. It turned out, he had been dropped off that
morning, so he was probably pretty confused. We had to break him of a few
minor habits, but he quickly became a member of our family( heck, he WAS our
family)
Recently, his health had been failing. He had bad arthritis, and a patially
collapsed trachea, which caused him to cough somtimes. He stopped eating about
a week ago. We took him in to the Vet who did some blood work and found his
kidneys were pretty bad. We got some medicine but it really didn't help. On
Friday, we took him in to get some IV nourishment, but by the end of the day,
there was no improvement. At 5:30pm we went back to the office and the Vet
brought him out for us. He could no longer lift his head and he looked
terrible. We made a very hard descision and told the Vet to please take care
of him, neither myself or my girlfriend wished to be in the room when it
happened. Just before we left, he licked my girlfriends hand as though he were
saying goodbye. That's my last memory of him. I miss him and I love him. He
will always be our 'little boy" He is being cremated and we will bury his
ashes in my Moms backyard.
I miss you Cory.