Well, that was mostly coherent.
I felt incredibly sick all day today. No water before bed for me.
My mother has taken to calling me to tell me about how she's done a bit of reading into animals going to heaven. My father and I have both agreed to indulge her and agree. She's a mess. My sister's a mess. My incredibly boring father is fine. I had to see my Aunt, Uncle, and Grandparents this morning and they commiserated but added "It's not as if she wasn't old." I've gotten this a few times. It's one of the more wrong-headed ways to console someone I've encountered in my life.
Today sucked. Tomorrow will too. The next will be slightly better. And so on.
RIP Annie
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Cinemanolis
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Mister Tee
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Losing a beloved pet is something many of us here have gone through in recent years, and there's really no upside to it. It's pain, through and through, and the only thing I can offer as encouragement is to say that that pain, like most memories, does diminish over time (though it can also unexpectedly return at full strength).
The love of a pet is just an immensely strong thing. I've said for years that, if there's anything to the contention that departed friends and relatives beckon you over to the other side at the moment of death, no one could bring me over faster than my dog Watson.
The love of a pet is just an immensely strong thing. I've said for years that, if there's anything to the contention that departed friends and relatives beckon you over to the other side at the moment of death, no one could bring me over faster than my dog Watson.
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The Original BJ
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OscarGuy
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Very sorry about your loss. There is a void in all our lives that can only be filled by a pet. They are the only creatures that don't know what the word betrayal means and will always be with you no matter what crap your life can throw at you. We are stronger people for knowing them and only the weak cannot truly love and appreciate them.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
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Precious Doll
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Very sorry to hear about your loss Josh.
A very good friend of my had to have his beloved 6 and a half year dog Zahra put to sleep today. She had lost a great deal of weight of the last couple of weeks and the final test results yesterday from the vet revealed a large cancerous tumor in her stomach.
He's very cut up about her passing.
A very good friend of my had to have his beloved 6 and a half year dog Zahra put to sleep today. She had lost a great deal of weight of the last couple of weeks and the final test results yesterday from the vet revealed a large cancerous tumor in her stomach.
He's very cut up about her passing.
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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anonymous1980
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Big Magilla
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My deepest sympathies, Josh. The loss of a beloved pet is a unique pain and sorrow, and the grieving is terrible to go through. The one saving grace is that, as you know, eventually the pain will subside and memories of Annie will make you smile and laugh again. And you'll think of her running around on Elysian fields and know she's having a great time.
And keep getting as trashed as you need to be. When my cat Tiffany died a few years ago, Scotch was my best friend. (That and Gerald Ford, whose very lengthy memorial and funeral period was that week, and I watched it non-stop imagining the eulogies for the ex-President were actually for Tiffy.)
And keep getting as trashed as you need to be. When my cat Tiffany died a few years ago, Scotch was my best friend. (That and Gerald Ford, whose very lengthy memorial and funeral period was that week, and I watched it non-stop imagining the eulogies for the ex-President were actually for Tiffy.)
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
(Keep in mind: TRASHED)
The Staman family was blessed with the Annie Girl in May of 1995. This was the same month that I watched Braveheart for the first time at the age of 14 and first became entranced with motion pictures. Within six months, I will be thirty years of age, and the Annie Girl has passed away.
Annie exhibited human behavior. She was a cross between a cat, a dog, and a small person. I remember tossing her a ball many a time and watching her bat it around like a cat. When we first got her, for whatever reason we thought that we could keep her in the walkway between the kitchen and the back door to the back yard. Within the next decade, she basically laid claim to the entire house, sleeping in and on whatever she saw fit. Within the first week we got her, she choked on a chicken bone and my father banged his fist on her stomach, and she proceeded to vomit up the chicken bone et al. From there on out, the sun rose and set on my father's shoulders. My mother who has been chronically ill with bladder infections for her entire married life has found in this dog a travel companion through middle age. What started off a rapscallion bitch slowly became a Golden Girl for her to spend her days with on the couch.
Annie became deaf a few years back without our knowing it, and then blind last year. I was told while I was on set, and it was described as such: that she was given cataract surgery, but suddenly became blind with the cone around her neck, and the side affects including quickening of breath and post-operative blindness. To which I commented: YOU SIMULATED DEATH IN MY DOG! But the legend of Annie continued onward. Visibly it took her more strength to continue onward, but she did and mostly for the benefit of others. She trained my mother to give her treats by poking her ankles with her cold nose. I recall how when she was first going to get spayed, she had her period and my mother exclaimed "YOU'VE GOT AN APPOINTMENT!"
But more than anything else, I remember this West Highland White Terrier on her back as I tickle her stomach and hold her down, and the horrible noises she made, noises that sounded like from a furnace. In the first few years, it was easy for Annie to lose her mind, make throaty noises, and run around the room like a possessed creature; but in subsequent years, she became more stationary. For years, she had given the appearance of skipping when she went out for a walk, but soon enough we realized that her legs had sockets too wide for her tiny bones and "skipping" was all she could do to keep moving on her walks. Annie struggled in her last few years but she was an invaluable asset to the house, even as I wondered how much longer this dog would cobble my mother's life to her workaday.
I babysat last April and watched Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, and could ascertain a change in the dog that used to wake me up every morning at 6:30AM before choir, but I chalked it up to old dog syndrome. I wanted to spend the Fourth with my friends this year (last near of which, I got arrested in New Orleans for intoxication on the same day-ish), and so when I checked up on my sister's flight plan this morning, I learned that Annie was taken to the hospital for erratic breathing. I then learned that nothing could be done to move her erratic breathing to a means that she could be comfortable with. Considering that my parents had given her cataract surgery last year, I doubt there are more loving parents that could have done any more for her than them.
She couldn't breathe this morning and they took her in to the hospital, piped her little nose full of oxygen, and couldn't stand to see her brave little 15-year old body confined to a gurney bed with pipes going into her little lungs, and apparently no progress was being done. I was in Los Angeles at a Kinkos when this happened. I was told that she would be okay. My mother turned 60 yesterday, but I wanted hang out with my friends over the weekend because for the past two years I was in other states. I slowly began to realize this weekend that this would be the last time I would see my dog. She was buried near the fisherman by the pool. We said kadish at 8PM, and the Annie girl was laid to rest in a hole that my father facilitated after it was dug improperly by Carlos, our lawnscaper whose job this wasn't to begin with. For whatever reason, my father has never taken full acknowledgment for saving my dog's life, but he did.
I used to wind Annie up, and get her growing and angry, and just beat the [relative] shit out of her, and she would love it! Everyone else would treat her like a tiny person, but not me! I would treat her like the predator that she was. The last time I saw her, I found ways to wind her up while being conscientious of her state. Now, I am trashed on Coors Light, and have said my peace over the phone as my father has laid her body down to rest, and I will not beat the shit out of my dog again; and all my tuesday wishes will be consolidated to being sloppy drunk by her grave near the fisherman by the pool. There has never been a dog like Annie, a girl who spent so much of her life batting at balls tossed her way like a cat...and I aspire the rest of my life to living up to the person she thought me to be.
If I reach a fraction thereof, then I'm some kind of success.
I'm quite drunk right now after reassuring my sister that Annie is in fact alive and anticipating reincarnation, which is to say a Coors Light-fueled lie-session aimed at my devastated sister, but in times like this I wish that I believed in concepts of the eternal, because ye gods! There has never been a creature to have pawed the earth as the Annie Girl.
You will be missed with every fiber of my soul, my beautiful alarm clock, you!
The Staman family was blessed with the Annie Girl in May of 1995. This was the same month that I watched Braveheart for the first time at the age of 14 and first became entranced with motion pictures. Within six months, I will be thirty years of age, and the Annie Girl has passed away.
Annie exhibited human behavior. She was a cross between a cat, a dog, and a small person. I remember tossing her a ball many a time and watching her bat it around like a cat. When we first got her, for whatever reason we thought that we could keep her in the walkway between the kitchen and the back door to the back yard. Within the next decade, she basically laid claim to the entire house, sleeping in and on whatever she saw fit. Within the first week we got her, she choked on a chicken bone and my father banged his fist on her stomach, and she proceeded to vomit up the chicken bone et al. From there on out, the sun rose and set on my father's shoulders. My mother who has been chronically ill with bladder infections for her entire married life has found in this dog a travel companion through middle age. What started off a rapscallion bitch slowly became a Golden Girl for her to spend her days with on the couch.
Annie became deaf a few years back without our knowing it, and then blind last year. I was told while I was on set, and it was described as such: that she was given cataract surgery, but suddenly became blind with the cone around her neck, and the side affects including quickening of breath and post-operative blindness. To which I commented: YOU SIMULATED DEATH IN MY DOG! But the legend of Annie continued onward. Visibly it took her more strength to continue onward, but she did and mostly for the benefit of others. She trained my mother to give her treats by poking her ankles with her cold nose. I recall how when she was first going to get spayed, she had her period and my mother exclaimed "YOU'VE GOT AN APPOINTMENT!"
But more than anything else, I remember this West Highland White Terrier on her back as I tickle her stomach and hold her down, and the horrible noises she made, noises that sounded like from a furnace. In the first few years, it was easy for Annie to lose her mind, make throaty noises, and run around the room like a possessed creature; but in subsequent years, she became more stationary. For years, she had given the appearance of skipping when she went out for a walk, but soon enough we realized that her legs had sockets too wide for her tiny bones and "skipping" was all she could do to keep moving on her walks. Annie struggled in her last few years but she was an invaluable asset to the house, even as I wondered how much longer this dog would cobble my mother's life to her workaday.
I babysat last April and watched Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, and could ascertain a change in the dog that used to wake me up every morning at 6:30AM before choir, but I chalked it up to old dog syndrome. I wanted to spend the Fourth with my friends this year (last near of which, I got arrested in New Orleans for intoxication on the same day-ish), and so when I checked up on my sister's flight plan this morning, I learned that Annie was taken to the hospital for erratic breathing. I then learned that nothing could be done to move her erratic breathing to a means that she could be comfortable with. Considering that my parents had given her cataract surgery last year, I doubt there are more loving parents that could have done any more for her than them.
She couldn't breathe this morning and they took her in to the hospital, piped her little nose full of oxygen, and couldn't stand to see her brave little 15-year old body confined to a gurney bed with pipes going into her little lungs, and apparently no progress was being done. I was in Los Angeles at a Kinkos when this happened. I was told that she would be okay. My mother turned 60 yesterday, but I wanted hang out with my friends over the weekend because for the past two years I was in other states. I slowly began to realize this weekend that this would be the last time I would see my dog. She was buried near the fisherman by the pool. We said kadish at 8PM, and the Annie girl was laid to rest in a hole that my father facilitated after it was dug improperly by Carlos, our lawnscaper whose job this wasn't to begin with. For whatever reason, my father has never taken full acknowledgment for saving my dog's life, but he did.
I used to wind Annie up, and get her growing and angry, and just beat the [relative] shit out of her, and she would love it! Everyone else would treat her like a tiny person, but not me! I would treat her like the predator that she was. The last time I saw her, I found ways to wind her up while being conscientious of her state. Now, I am trashed on Coors Light, and have said my peace over the phone as my father has laid her body down to rest, and I will not beat the shit out of my dog again; and all my tuesday wishes will be consolidated to being sloppy drunk by her grave near the fisherman by the pool. There has never been a dog like Annie, a girl who spent so much of her life batting at balls tossed her way like a cat...and I aspire the rest of my life to living up to the person she thought me to be.
If I reach a fraction thereof, then I'm some kind of success.
I'm quite drunk right now after reassuring my sister that Annie is in fact alive and anticipating reincarnation, which is to say a Coors Light-fueled lie-session aimed at my devastated sister, but in times like this I wish that I believed in concepts of the eternal, because ye gods! There has never been a creature to have pawed the earth as the Annie Girl.
You will be missed with every fiber of my soul, my beautiful alarm clock, you!
"How's the despair?"