December 11 – “The Saga is complete”

We had one of those days yesterday.  A really great high.  A hugely powerful low.  And another bit of a high.  Sounds kind of roller coaster-y, doesn’t it.  You should have been living it. 

The day started out great.  We had a visit from some really good friends we made back when we lived in Denver, Mike and Olivia.  Mike had been preaching at a church in Houston, a pretty big English-speaking Korean church, if I understood him correctly.  He also regaled me with horror stories about the two – count ‘em – two knee replacement surgeries he has had … on the same knee.  And it still hurts him.  I’m not sure what all Chris and Olivia talked about.  They are the kind of friends who can pick it up like they saw each other yesterday, even when we haven’t seen them for years.  It was truly a great high to see them

And then came the low.  Really low.  We have been closely watching our 17-year-old dachshund Heidi for the last few days.  It was becoming apparent that she was losing the use of her back legs.  And she had a distinctive and overpowering foul odor about her that no amount of bathing was touching.  So we made the agonizing decision to take her to the vet and have her put down.  As it turned out, the vet who did the surgery on her tail was the one who spoke with us.  He absolutely agreed with the decision.  Her age put her in the top 95% of dogs of her breed who live that long, and he noted that she had obviously had a good, long life.  The smell was probably some necrotic tissue inside her.  The combination of that with the paralysis and her age simply did not bode well for her.  In his very kind words spoken with tears in his eyes and a catch in his throat, “She just looks so sad.”  We stayed with her while he administered the shots, and she died quite peacefully.  The saga of the dog that caught her tail is now complete.

Now that was a hard experience to overcome quickly.  But we did have some help.  We made it home in time to change clothes and head over to Cailyn’s school Christmas concert.  The kids sang lots of Christmas songs, and even shared some pretty great Dad jokes like: “What does Frosty do on the weekends?  Nothing.  He just chills out.”  I’ll have to save a few of those for my arsenal.  Cailyn did fabulous, of course.  She even had a speaking role.  All in all, the Christmas concert put a really positive period at the end of a long sentence that was our Monday. 

Psalms 119:49 says, “Remember your word to your servant, for you have given me hope.”

Father, thank you for our relationship with Mike and Olivia.  Watch over them.  And thank you for the compassion shown by our vet.  Bless him for that.  Amen.