Goodbye, Olive Girl

I know this is not a glowing picture of just my Olive. It's a picture of our lovely children, my mom's visiting puppy, and Olive on the edge. I could have found another picture of her alone, but it was important to post this one for twol reasons. The most obvious is it was the last one before she had to leave us. This picture was taken two weeks ago--we had to put our girl down this last Friday because the cancer was eating away at her poor body. She had lost a lot of weight and muscle tone and we could tell the pain in her mouth was getting much worse. The vet assured us we had come at the right time. But beyond all the details of what and why she had to go, I still wanted to point out the other important reason for posting this picture--you see, Olive was always there. She may have been on the sidelines most of time, but she was always there. I would just have to glance around and she was there. I would just have to say her name and she was there. She was always there. And now for the past few days I look around and she is not here. She's not at the sliding glass door ringing the bell to let her out, nor pawing at the door to be let in. She's not snorting at me in the kitchen asking me for a tidbit of leftovers. She's not sitting on the couch by me watching a movie. She's not slurping from her bowl, dropping dog food on my living room floor, not following me around everywhere. She's just not. I miss her deeply--even if she was just in the shadows much of the time, it was comforting to know she was there. Love you, my big brown girl. She you again one day.