just a bit more luck

well, i figured if i started this on mom’s birthday, i might as well finish it on shane’s…

…he’s our number one reader, he’s our number one commentator, and while mom was good and saintly shane is…well…NOT saintly. but a damn fine guy, who turns a year older today. i won’t say how old, but let’s just say whatever year it is, he’s still sixty-one days younger than me. and he won’t let me forget that…ever.

moving on…sorry, bud – but today i gotta return to a previous topic:

it kinda freaks me out that this little ball of life, the lucky dude, who was a friend, a son, a great puppy, and a SUPREME alarm system ran outside less than four days ago (at 6:40am on monday) and within ten minutes i was carrying (what i would later come to realize was) his lifeless body back in the house and rushing to the vet only to confirm the worst…

…monday morning, 6:40am, the picture of health – running to the door he BEAT miss copper out so he could be the first one to hit the yard. fast forward to 3:52pm thursday afternoon and i get the call that his urn (with him inside) is ready to be picked up and that they’re “open till seven”.

i couldn’t do it. i know i NEED to, and later today i probably will. but it was just too soon.

of course, this is one of the reasons their vet said he switched services on the cremation services – they’re a lot quicker. calum took two weeks. lucky only took three days – and lest you think the obvious, thanks to age and losing a limb calum barely outweighed the lucky dude by fifteen pounds by the time they both passed…it’s just that, even with cancer in the mix, calum lived to be twice as old. when he went, it hurt, but it was expected – this completely blindsided me.

no more doggy funk (as in the smell OR the “lucky dance”, that very few of you got to witness as he wouldn’t do it in front of just anybody)
no more constant whining for NO reason (okay, that part i won’t miss)
no more barking

that last one creeps me out the most. see, it wasn’t just a lucky thing – he picked it up from calum. it seems that both MALE dogs were on barking detail – the girls, not so much. so calum was announcing people’s presence from september of 1996 until his death in november of 2007. lucky started chiming in december of 2004 and kept it going till the first of this week.

now i come home to silence. the girls are here, but it’s an eerie silence. sure, i’m sure if somebody broke in there would be a ruckus…but when i just get home? like from the gym in a bit? nada…

…so, one last look and i’ll let it go:

best guess is either and aneurysm or a heart attack – the latter being more likely due to his lineage which most likely had it’s share of inbreeding (it was pretty obvious he was the runt of a pure-bred pitbull litter, possibly from a fight house, since day one – explains the muscle but lack of size, slight aggressiveness and distrust of others) and inbreeding tends to breed in heart conditions…makes you realize how fleeting life is, so i was gonna close with a quote a buddy put on his facebook page that i read bleary-eyed at 4:30 this morning (yeah, i’ve been up THAT long…it’s gonna be a long day) that said, “It never fucking ends until you do something about it.”, which i meant to describe the funk in me this inspired and, to a degree, the funk that was pre-existing before lucky even died…but then i noticed moments later he changed his status to “single” – the most common way any of us keep up with our friend’s relationship status these days…

…oops.

so, we’ll just close on “lucky dude, we miss you”