Goodbye to Little Sadie
August 23rd, 2024
We said goodbye to our Sadie yesterday, and I’m loading all my photos of her for Alan, and, well, 3 hours remaining to fill up the thumb drive. So I’m going through them… sigh… 14 years is a long time together.
That’s our Little Sadie above, her first winter with us, December 2010, near her birthday. You can see the greyhound in her, but the shih tzu not so much:
I met her at Dog Days of Stockholm, August 14, 2010, when I’d volunteered at the shelter to take a dog down and show her off. I was initially offered a little poof-dog, and no way. I traded that one for Sadie. She did her magic with me, riding down to Stockholm with her chin on my shoulder the whole way — such a sweetie. Much later, I learned that she was after the crumbs on my shirt… oh well. I did show her off, talked her up, but no luck. I’d learned a little of her story, she’d been found as a stray in March, 2010, and had been in the shelter since. Only nine months old and 6 months of that in the shelter during her most crucial developmental time. She needed a home STAT, and I couldn’t resist, even though she was not a German Shepherd.
Sadie came home with me for the weekend to test her out with Kady, and it went OK, though she was overwhelmed I think (horrible photo, old camera). And she was so small, particularly compared to our sheps, but she as still a baby, and became knows as our “medium pup.”
We agreed she was a good fit and Alan signed on the bottom line, wrote a check, and she was ours. Little did we know what life with a nine month old puppy was like.
THIS was the essence of Sadie — here she is “playing tennis” with Kady:
Kady was not too impressed, note the eye roll:
Sadie was always on the move until around 3 years old. She chewed everything in sight, including 2 pairs of Alan’s Rayban glasses, a phone, hair brushes, shoes, a library book, and the little bitch counter-surfed a holiday dessert to the floor, a GINGER CHEEZECAKE! Ate almost all of it, and did not get sick. That theft was serious…
And she chewed on and unrolled hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, no matter how they were loaded:
All the sheps were older when we adoped them. Kady was probably 7, and she and Sadie basically got along, but Sadie was for sure a bit too much for her. I don’t think there were any bloody spats, but for sure a few snarls and snarks. Then we adopted Summer, our “hospice” dog, who at 12 was rescued from a Gary, IN shelter. We drove to Wisconsin and loaded her up, this time, it was Sadie who was not too impressed and she may have wanted us to take Summer back. That tongue says it all:
And yet Sadie was very afraid of Steiner, they were never close:
After Summer and Kady died in 2014, we got the pop up camper, and Sadie LOVED camping. Though she could have jumped right through the rear screen, she was content inside, learned to be less reactive, and understood that all those dogs being walked on the site loop belonged there:
The easiest way to get her joyfully bouncing around was to ask her “Do you want to go CAMPING?!?!”
That first year, we went out west to the Black Hills and Hell Creek State Park on the Ft. Peck reservoir, and back through Ft. Stevens State Park in North Dakota and Scenic State Park in northern Minnesota.
In 2017, we went on a long trip along the UP and whew, did it rain:, but as long as she was headed somewhere in the van, she was happy:
Sadie enjoyed camp-hosting in the hybrid “office” at Myre-Big Island, despite the heavy rain:
We spent a lot of time at Myre-Big Island through the years when I was representing Association of Freeborn County Landowners, which I think she found rather boring:
We also picnicked often at Frontenac, staring at Wisconsin’s West Bank:
Spring 2022 we went out west, to Devil’s Tower and Craters of the Moon and places in between:
This spring, before camp hosting, I went to New Mexico, and she was as utterly freaked out by the 60 mph winds as I was. Here in the calm before the storm:
We bailed and caught our breath in hotel in Wichita!
Sadie, Alan, and I camp-hosted through the entire month May this year, yes all month, and she enjoyed being outdoors so much, and of course, she was also so happy to be snoozing in the tent. Here she is supervising clean-up after an intense storm that took out our screen tent, one of many storms that month:
Though we were camp-hosting at Frontenac, she spent some of that time back and forth to Red Wing with Alan.
Did I mention that Sadie loved our new kitties? Oh, right, that’s probably because she didn’t, really. Election day 2016, neighbors across the street posted cats to give away, and I grabbed the cat carrier and grabbed two cats, Maggie and Thor. They each fit in my hand, that small. They were in a cage or a week to adjust, and then freedom. Turned out that the torty female loved Sadie, and was her emotional support animal when it was storming. Thor and Sadie had little to do with each other until the last month or so, when I think Thor sensed Sadie was fading, and he spent a lot of time snuggled with her.
Similarly, when Kady was fading with doggy dementia, though she and Sadie were not close, Sadie comforted Kady, as if she knew.
When Alan was hospitalized with leukemia, she missed him as much as he missed her, so I organized a picnic outside the door, and they both were so happy to see each other. This is my all time favorite photo of her — just look at her smile:
Some time after that, she started going downhill. Her driver-rear knee went out, it was twisting as she walked, and she had trouble on the stairs. She also started peeing randomly, without any notice, no bark, nothing. At that point, she had started on pee pills, and her dosage was increased, but we were often up sometime between 2-4 a.m. to take her out. She still enjoyed going for rides, picnics, and we didn’t camp much due to leukemia, just once in July 2023. She mostly laid around then, which was perfect because Alan was still in the middle of treatment.
Then in June, we went around the south side of Lake Superior to Ontario. She was pretty much stuffed into a packed car, and went along for the ride. She spent most of the time in the tent, snoozing.
The last few months, maybe 6 months, both knees were giving out, her Meloxicam dose was increased, but that’s just blocking pain, there was nothing we could really do. She was coughing now and then and panting all the time, congestive heart failure. She’d also slowed down eating, so we were bribing her with special treats, real lamb hearts, and I even baked her a turkey last week. Then, this last week, she pretty much stopped eating and was emitting with no notice, out of control and really gross, and just laying around, no spark at all. Alan noted later that he thought she’d looked at him eye to eye and told him “I’m done.”
We both spent all day yesterday sitting with her as we waited for word from the vet, and then time to go in — what a long, painful wait that was. Now we’re left with memories of her, and so many photos to remind us of those 14 years we were all together. 3.3gb — so many photos that I had to let it run all night! And after that another 4 hours copying photos of her from all the travel files. AAACK! Fond memories for those two days of consolidating. Here they are, waiting, with Thor comforting our grrrrrrl:
We’re missing our doggy. Fourteen years and one week she was with us, and every time we do anything at all, we’re looking for her. All these photos are comforting, remembering what a good long time we did have with her, that she went everywhere with us, almost, except airplanes and trains. She was a high mileage grrrrrrrl, with us for 14 years and one week. Sadie was the best grrrrrrrrrrrl.
New cats? Gotta post on Legalectric!
April 27th, 2017
Alan tells me there are no photos of our cats on Legalectric! How can that be? Here’s Maggie (the tortise) and Thor (white with grey) the day we got them, just after their much needed bath. That was November 1 or so, the neighbors were moving and had all these kittens… I’d met their mother when she came over to our 100-mile garage sale and spent the day hanging out with us:
I’d put food out for her on the deck, put out a basket for her to lounge in, and wanted to bring her in to be spayed, because she was “living” in their little storage shed, but I couldn’t take that on then. Drat, because maybe four months later, there were kittens running around. Then they had to move, and had all these kittens, then it was down to two, and I saw one on one of the city’s fb pages, recognized the houses in the background, went over with a cat carrier. They stayed in Summer’s HUGE dog crate for 2 weeks as they and the dog adjusted:
Next thing you know, Little Sadie has two new friends:
And then phone had “catastrophic failure” and there went all the photos! … sigh… yes, CATastrophic, off into the interwebs. Disaster… cute photos gone. Oh well, plenty more around.
Tick season in full swing!
March 19th, 2016
Today, Alan was scratching Little Sadie’s neck, and found a lump. We corralled her, dumped her over, and did an inspection, and it was a slightly engorged tick. Got all of it out rather easily.
But isn’t this a bit early? YES!! Another climate change impact. Turns out the tick season here usually starts in May. Not long ago, it was June 13:
Tick season starts full throttle in Minnesota
All of you with dogs, time to start fighting those ticks, starting with a head to tail inspection, right NOW!
Summer’s Dog Days…
August 28th, 2012
It’s hard to be a dog. Summer’s having a rough time, not emissions compliant, and most days, she can’t walk after sunset, some days, it’s earlier. Yesterday we took her to the chiropractor again, Moe Body Works on Lyndale, Dr. Moses Smith. I HIGHLY recommend her. The problem is that Summer is getting older and losing it, she’s 13.5 and that’s an OLD shep. Hundreds of years old. She was adjusted head to tail, and I heard some loud cracks. She did trot out, which is good, but she’s just not doing well, and her body is not working and there’s just not much to do for her — she’s on pee pills, getting adjusted, her tumor is gone thanks to Summer herself, but her belly is rounded with fluid, her legs are working less and less, she’s pretty much deaf, and her eyes are going. She still gets really worked up about her food and water, and yes, she is smiling almost all the time — that is a major criteria of dog happiness. Lately she’s spending most nights in her jail, which she doesn’t like, but she can’t do stairs late in the day. We’d gotten out the sling and are using that now and then, she needed it yesterday to get out and pee. This morning she was able to get herself up, with some trouble and some help, and she got out the door, but left a trail of poops. Today the baby gate gets installed at the bottom of the stairs so she stays downstairs, which she isn’t going to like because she spends her day at my feet under the desk. And it’s worse for me than it is for her, it’s hard to see her decline.
And then Kady, the cruise control middle dog, had a mishap and yanked her toenail out, most but not all the way, and it hurt like hell, she was hopping around in the grass, anywhere where the toenail would touch (hard floors, cement, that was OK, just limping), and bleeding all over, little toe prints:
So after the chiro in Minneapolis, then we headed down to Kenyon Vet Clinic, where she got the Michael Jackson propofol treatment and got her toenail yanked. She was out for a while, and had that cross-eyed smiley utterly wasted look for a while. Kady Kate’s not moonwalking today, back to normal.
Dogs took all day yesterday!
And our Little Sadie is just fine, whew!
Pack time!
May 11th, 2011
Summer is doing so well, she’s got the “going outside” thing down, has learned “sit” and “wait” and is working on “down” (on command, she spends a lot of time in “down” naturally), and is working things out with Kady. Right now, all three are surrounding my chair, black and tan office rug, even Sadie, who usually spends the day upstairs with Alan.
Three dogs take a lot of time, especially if they’re not on the same schedule. Here they are today, in sync! Summer’s first walk on a Gentle Leader, she’s a lot peppier than we expected, and she’ll be doing some walking in her old age. What a relief!!!