Rescue is never easy.

Love from a Foster Parent

Buddy is gone.  My heart has a hole, but I know it was the right decision. 

The Bud was with me less than a month and I am left wondering how I can feel so heartbroken when I knew him for such a short while.  I guess it is because I believed that he would be fine and that we would have another year or maybe two together.  I believed that unconditional love would cure what ailed him.  I believed that a dog that sweet and pure and good would live just a while longer.  I believed that if I loved him enough, he would be just fine.  But it was not to be.

Buddy was surrendered to the San Jose shelter by his humans – for euthanasia.  It was noted that he had a limp and he was overweight – maybe arthritis or maybe cancer.  Either way, he didn’t deserve to be abandoned to spend his last days alone and in a cage at a noisy and stressful shelter.  Silicon Valley Pet Project offered to rescue him, and I immediately volunteered. I went to pick up The Bud, and immediately fell in love with the big lug.  He came limping out of the kennel, tail wagging and was happy to follow this new human home.

I called Buddy Thumper because he would thump, thump, thump his big tail whenever I approached.  He would lie on his side and barely lift his hind leg so that I would give him a tummy rub.  I would always finish off the tummy rub with a kiss on his muzzle and a “I love you, my special boy” whispered in his ear.  I called him my Elmer Fudd.  He had a sweet innocence about him – oh boy, oh boy, which way did they go? He would get excited, but everything was done in slow motion – in Buddy time.

I believe that Buddy crossed over The Rainbow Bridge and that his spirit soars.  He can dream his dreams and snooze through his naps.  He can awaken and easily rise to his feet and shake out his coat, all without pain or struggle.  He is free of the confinement of an aging and deteriorating body.  He is free to run though fields, to stop and sniff every blade of grass and to plop himself down and roll onto his back and wriggle and scratch, with his legs freely waving to the clouds.