stinkydog

so, what the hell happened? I don't know. If I knew I probably wouldn't be up at 4am crying my eyes out. That video of her and the puppy was literally taken less than 24 hours before she died. This completely blew me away.

All I know is that Sam and I came back from eating dinner and everything seemed fine. We were moving furniture out of the soon-to-be baby room and all of the dogs were underfoot (of course). I was putting down cardboard on the new floors so we wouldn't scratch anything moving stuff across when I noticed that Flo was in the living room barfing a little (not a lot, just a tiny bit). I picked her up and put her in the kitchen so she could finish barfing on the old floors instead and went to go get something to clean it up. When I came back she had gone outside through the doggie door so I cleaned up and went back to moving stuff with Sam. I know, it sounds awful. Why didn't I check on her? Because our dogs barf all the time. They are constantly eating stuff they're not supposed to, so we just are kinda used to it I guess. Pick it up and move on, right? Anyway, we were moving furniture for probably 20 more minutes and I noticed that she hadn't come back inside so I went out to check on her and when I did, she was just laying there... gone. So, I guess the theory right now is that she choked on whatever it is that she had eaten and that's what happened. Don't think it doesn't kill me to think that if I had just gone to go check on her sooner, maybe I could have, I don't know, done CPR or something or rushed her to the emergency vet. SOMETHING, and she'd still be alive. The most devastating thing is just knowing that I was home in the other room and she went out there in the dark cold backyard and died by herself.

Looking back on it, we also wonder if she hadn't been really sick and we didn't notice what we were seeing. She had been acting a little odd (i.e. playing with the puppy, fighting with Hudson and with Fergus which was just...odd) and I had just told Sam yesterday afternoon when I was laying on the bed with the dogs that Flo smelled really "off" and I was going to give her a bath when it warmed up a little. But then again, Flo was known to eat paper regularly--she had a thing for it and she didn't really "act sick" (see video). So maybe she had some sort of organ failure, maybe she choked and suffocated. I don't know. It does and it doesn't matter at this point. I'd really like to know, but it won't bring her back.

It seems so crazy. We've only had her for a little over a year and a half, but you guys that knew her know that didn't really matter. She was part of our family pretty much from the very first day. She just had that kind of irresistable personality--you couldn't help but love her. I'm so sad. I can't sleep. I keep clutching the puppy and just trying to keep my mind off the awfulness of it all, but so far it isn't working. I know she's in a good place... though please, please, please... don't send me the Rainbow Bridge poem-- I can't take it right now.

I'm just going to go try and lay down and imagine what it must have been like when Georgia met Flo up there. The two little queen bees..circling each other and giving the up/down look.. makes me smile just thinking about it.