A Dog's World


Her name was Gracie. In dog years she lived longer than most, but not long enough for those humans around her. She came to our home by way of Colleen Harrison, a good friend of Joy’s. We found out later that she had purchased Gracie from a dog mill. She had spent her first month or two in a cage some place in Missouri or some other God forsaken state.
It was at the time that our daughter Rachel had been sent unwillingly to the rainbow bridge, and Joy and Colleen thought that it might be good for Julia to have a little dog for a few days. The dog was left at our house for a few days and she never went back to Colleen. We paid for her and then took her to the vet to work on many of the diseases that she had contacted at the dog mill.
She was with Julia and the rest of the family until Julia went to college. She couldn’t have pets at college, so we, her parents, ended up with three gold fish, two cats, two dogs and a partridge in the pear tree. They all had names, but the only ones that stick to my poor brain are Scratchy the cat, Toffee and Gracie. Toffee and Gracie would play together. It was one sided, Toffee was a Veshil, a hunting dog and ten times the size of Gracie who was a toy poodle. They could play for hours at tug of war and keep away and chase.  
Gracie has spent time with Joy and I, with Carl and Jenny, Brad and Amy, Stephen, and Brenda. Her last couple of years she has spent with Brenda with occasional visits with Joy and I. When we had her even though I always said she was a nuisance she would always come and snuggle up to me and do the tricks that she had been taught, a lot of those tricks were taught to her by Stephen.
When we moved to the condo there was no yard for her to play in or use for the bathroom. Brenda needed a companion dog at the time so she went with her. She came back for a week and sometimes a couple while Brenda took care of visits to her children or other business.
Gracie was always a loving kind dog. She didn’t bark a lot when people came to the door. She didn’t like men who wore hats, that probably came from when she was kept in a kennel when she was new born. She would bark at much larger dogs while on walks and then walk on her back too legs to look larger. Only one of those dogs ever challenged her and that resulted in not her being hurt but in Joy getting her leg broken and having to have metal plate and pins put in to fix the breaks.
I think that this is possible an obituary for Gracie. She is going to cross the rainbow bridge today. She can no longer walk or eat. She is quite old in dog years but not expendable. It is just time for her to be released from her pain and suffering. She was truly loved by a lot of people and cared for by many. Good by Gracie, keep my chair warm for when I come.

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