I knew that my old dog friend Ernie was nearing the end of his life and today is the day he was put down. He is the little black (technically brindle) puppy in this pic. The big yellow dog was Sam, who was nearing the end of his life, as was my brother, at the time Ernie was adopted. If you embiggen the pic, you may be able to see that Sam was tolerating a snuggle with Ernie but not necessarily all that happy about it. Nevertheless, he trained Ernie to use the backyard to crap (as my dad would’ve said) and other important life lessons.

My brother has been gone for 13 years and I have not seen Ernie in five but he and I were good buddies once, along with his annoying little “brother” Alfred (who was put down a year or two ago).

Once when Dogmomster and her kids went on a band trip to China, I offered to pick Ernie and Alfred up from the boarding kennel and drive them up to the Moomincabin. I was a little nervous about this because I had very limited experience with driving dogs anywhere and I expected that they would whine the whole way and want to get out to dogP every five minutes. As it turned out, they were uber-excited to see meeeee at the kennel and once we got into the car, after Ernie grabbed my arm with his paw (a Dog Hug, i.e., THANK YOU!), they went to sleep. They slept until the Mackinac Bridge (with one potty stop). They perked up for the crossing, then slept the rest of the way to the moomincabin.

Ernie was certainly not perfect (who is? I am not) but he was fiercely protective of his family and a very intelligent dog to boot. Our first night at the moomincabin during my dog-sitting gig they slept downstairs and when I came down in the morning, Alfred had left a little puddle. The Commander ALWAYS freaked out about any kind of liquid on the floor but calmed down when I swabbed it with a wet paper towel, then disinfected the area with a couple of Clorox wipes. Before I went to bed that night, I talked earnestly to Ernie, telling him that if Alfred had to go, he should wake me up. He did not wake me up and we had no more such incidents.

The second pic is one of my fave pics of all time. It was my 50th birthday and we were at Houghton Lake and I received this photo from my brother. Just about the best gift ever.

Godspeed Ernie! 🧡🧡🧡

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2018 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.