All Dogs Go to Heaven

It's been over a month now that I've been hiding a little secret because I didn't want to talk about it with anyone.  It took me over a week to tell Seth.  Chacon got hit on the road and is no longer with us.  If you remember the post a while back when Chacon was lost about how it should be me making the decisions if our dogs ever needed a major surgery because if it was up to Seth, he'd spend all the money we had, helping them.  I retract everything I said in that post because when I drove up to that dog, the only thing going through my head was, 'if he's alive, I'm putting him in the front seat of my car and taking him to the vet no matter what it costs.'  He wasn't alive.  We drove home, got the truck and went back to pick him up.  Ryker had a million questions and I tried to explain it to him, but he couldn't understand.  Even when I was trying to load him into the back of the truck, he was in the front yelling "why won't Chacon load up?"  "What's taking so long?"  He couldn't see what I was doing, thank goodness, because he was facing forward in his car seat.  When we got home, I parked the truck and we all got back in the car.  Ryker figured I wasn't letting him out of the truck because he would run off again.  He wanted to put his food in the back of the truck with him and some water.  As we rolled out of the driveway, I saw Cosmos go up and over the tailgate.  If you know Cosmos, he's mighty capable, but it takes quite a bit to make him take that leap.  Thank goodness I have good neighbors because two of them had him buried by the time we got home.  As I thought about how to explain this to Ryker all day at work, I realized that there was a reason my Dad always told me my cats ran away.  I tried all the way to work to explain it and he just couldn't understand.  I decided to just see what happened on the way home and forget about explaining the reality of the situation.  We got home and when Chacon wasn't in the back of the pickup, he thought he ran away again.  I went with it.  He called and whistled for him and watched for him when we were driving for a few weeks.  I've finally gotten him to understand that he's not coming back, like the rabbit at our CSA farm and Hazel the pig (it's been a rough summer for us) and that he needs to stop putting food out for him because Cosmos is eating it and he's going to get fat.  He hugs Cosmos all the time and thanks him for not running off and asks him if he misses his friend.  We've had numerous conversations about it over the last month and if you ask him right now, he'll tell you he's in heaven.  I know he doesn't understand it, but at least he has an answer. 

We'll miss your constant drool, your howl whenever a siren sounded, your giant block head that made people not believe you were a full lab, how you turned red in the summer until we combed your undercoat out, your never tiring water retrieves, your white goatie, your giant head hanging over the side of the truck, you're happy go lucky attitude toward all other dogs until they messed with your boy Cos and you had to step in, how you drug Cosmos along on runs (literally, they were tied together to give Chacon a better workout and make Cosmos keep up) and the constant love and companionship you gave all of us. Ryker misses you greatly but is happy that on our daily races back from the mailbox that he always wins now and he told me that now that he has a peddle bike that he could have beaten you. Cosmos and I both know that you would still smoke him.



Rest in Peace good buddy. 6/1/2005-7/22/11