If you're looking for an Obama Rox/Sux diary, this isn't it. If you want witticisms dissing Mitt Romney or another Republican, I'm sure you'll find a lot to like elsewhere; Kossacks are particularly good at it. Interested in saving the planet, helping Darcy Burner (a very good idea), pictures of pooties at play? There are diaries for that.
This one's for a very handsome black guy of 7 1/2 years who walked on to the Rainbow Bridge this afternoon at about 2 pmPacific time, and I don't even have a picture.i
Quinn was a Flatcoated Retriever. We had him and his sister Raven among our five , now four, dogs. The two of them were show dogs until they were three, when one of their siblings died of cancer and their breeder, a dear friend, pulled the entire breedline from show and competitive fieldwork and said they must all be spayed or neutered right away. So we knew he might be susceptible. A few years later, their sire died of cancer in his late middle age.
So when we found out from the vet this afternoon that he had a mass, a very big one, in his lung and that his lymph nodes were involved, we had known that it might be a possibility. Nonetheless, we were shocked and grief-stricken.
Quinn was my bonded dog. He'd come to us when he was a year and a half old because he really needed a woman to bond with and my friend's other two males weren't about to let Quinn bond with her. Deb was also trying to keep Quinn from getting killed. At the time, she was raising and breeding foundation-stock Appaloozas, and Quinn had found himself a fun game: he'd run up to the back of a horse, jump up and grip the horse's tail with his teeth, and hang on. The horse would go running and Quinn would merrily sail along behind, and one good kick from a horse's back hoof would have been "goodnight, everybody" for Quinn, so Deb wanted us to take him sooner rather than later.
We weren't really ready for another big male Flatcoat, having just lost our beloved Bonehead a week earlier, but Quinn needed to come to us, so he joined our family. We both slipped up repeatedly and called him Bonehead. Eventually he became Mr. Dumb Dog because of an expression he'd get sometimes, where he would cock his head, lift up his ears, and look at us sideways as if to say "whaaaaa?" Dumb he was not. Goofy - always, but then he was a Flatcoat and that's what they do. They're known as the Peter Pans of the dog world for good reason.
I don't even know what to write. I am filled with grief; we both are. I could tell Quinn stories until I could no longer type, but my eyes keep spilling over and the keyboard and screen are awfully blurry.
Tealwin's The Mighty Quinn
January 1, 2005 - July 14, 2012
Sung on his walk on to Spirit with my goodbye song "Where Good Dogs Dance", though I could hardly sing the verses for my voice breaking.