As bad as it gets, it gets worse

Happy holidays?

I’ve been quite out of it and instead of making progress I just see a to-do list that continually grows and never crosses out plans.

About a month ago, everything seemed great.  I had good website income and extra work on the side.  I guess money isn’t what I’ve got to complain about anyway, because the business side of things seems to be doing just fine without too much intervention from me.

But where am I instead of writing new posts?  Well, the first problem was coming down with that horrible flu we’re supposed to be afraid of.  After a week, just as I thought I had begun to recover, I got slapped with a recurring eye infection that’s bothered me off and on since I was about a year old.  As soon as that was clearing up, I got hit with a second round of the flu that feels identical to the first one!

I could get over that much…

I thought I was all over the illness and everything was fine, when one of our puppies suddenly lost her appetite.  Well, she’s not really our puppy, we were just watching her for my girlfriend’s brother while they went to Africa on a research & humanitarian trip.  Of course, we’re glad to take in this awesome dog – a Katrina rescue – and give her the best life we possibly could.  We’d had her for almost two years, and she was really becoming an important part of our little family.

But we couldn’t do everything to help her, and we honestly didn’t know what to do about her lost appetite.  Apparently, she’s done this before we got her and she’s been known to be stubborn about what she wants to eat.  No problem, we got her some wet food and she licked at that a little bit.  We made some rice and chicken for her, and she nibbled at it a little, too.

Yesterday she started throwing up, including some piece of paper or napkin.  Ahhh, she’s puked back up whatever was bothering her!  We thought everything was going to get better, but just in case, she had a vet appointment scheduled for this morning at 7 am.  Despite a few hints she might have been improving, we were just starting to get really worried.  We canceled our Thanksgiving plans, and we were ready to take her in and do whatever it took to make her feel better.

But she didn’t make it to the morning.

Without a sound, she just passed on in the night, sleeping next to me as I slept, down by the foot of the bed.  I awoke to my girlfriend’s screams and cries, so I knew something was wrong but I was hardly prepared for the sudden feeling of being punched in the gut and chest all at once.

We weren’t ready to lose such a sweet and young dog.  We knew her real parents were coming soon to pick her up, but we figured she was just getting ready to go on the next phase of this adventure we call life.  She was only about four years old, and we thought she had her whole life ahead of her.  The lesson, I guess, is that two or three days of no appetite is too long – and we should always cherish the moments we have with loved ones, because we don’t know how suddenly and quickly they can be taken from us.

Good bye Mona – we love you so much

And what a good puppy she was…

We miss you…