Shadow in the Snow... A true story of unconditional love...A Story by shallimarRose I wrote this as a bittersweet story in October of last year after the passing of one of my best friends.. A Labrador/Rot mix named Shadow. Thank you for reading... As I sit here and begin this story it is November 7th 2012. Obama was re-elected as president last night and for many I guess today is a sad sad day, but that is not at all what is on my mind today. A little while ago I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor crying as I wiped the traces of black hair and my best friend from the bathroom tile. Its been 6 days 15 hours and 52 minutes since Shadow left us. I thought it was time I put away his His brush and water bowl, move his extra large bed out of my bedroom and move the furniture to vacuum all the dog hair up from under it.
I knew the moment he was gone that I would be writing a blog about him but I had not thought I would start it this soon. This is still very difficult for me but I know writing will be therapeutic and take a bit of weight off my heart and mind. The best place to start is from the beginning so this is how it all started. On the evening of February fourteenth, Valentines day 2002 my husband accidentally forgot to lock the back gate after putting out the trash cans. I awoke the next morning to find my two precious Dalmatians Pongo and Binky missing. I frantically combed the neighborhood and called my husband who came back from work to help me look. We searched everywhere, put fliers in all the vets and the local rescues and shelters. Seven days later we got a call that the shelter had found Binky. They said she was found far from our home and she was alone and injured. She had maybe gotten hit by a car or attacked but I guess we will never know. We went to the shelter and payed the bill for her medical attention and brought her home. It was a good thing she was chipped, but anyway No Pongo. My husband, kids grandkids were heart broken as well as myself. Pongo was my boy, a gift from my son. Days weeks and months passed and we could not find him, he never showed up at any of the vets or at the shelters. He was a very good looking dog and almost the spitting image of the dog that played Pongo in 101 dalmatians the first movie. His picture was everywhere they would have checked him for the chip if he had been brought in. We finally came to the realization there was not much hope of ever seeing my boy again.
After about three months it was becoming obvious that Binky was still grieving so my youngest daughter Candice began looking through the on-line rescue pets trying to find her a new playmate. One day Candice came accross the cutest little black puppy with big floppy ears and the biggest sad brown eyes you have ever seen . He was up for adoption but I was not ready to get another dog....not yet. My son in law took her to the rescue center and here she came home with this adorable Labrador retriever mix with his big ears and no tail. They said they did'tt know if he was born without a tail or if the mom had accidentally chewed it off with the umbilical cord but it was definitely not cropped, just no tail at all. When I saw this little guy it was love at first sight, my heart melted immediately. I let Her keep him. He followed Candice everywhere and so we called him Shadow. Fast forward about three months.. Pongo has been missing now for six months and Shadow whom we had gotten at about 10 weeks old was nearing 6 months old and getting very VERY big. I received a phone call from someone who tells me they think they had seen my Pongo in their neighborhood and recognized him from the photo I had still up at the vet. She described him to a T although black and white spotted dogs are very much alike so I did not get my hopes up. She told us she had been seeing him for weeks in the neighborhood and leaving food out for him but he would not let anyone get near him so noone could catch him. My husband and I drove out to her neighborhood which was some miles from where the dogs were last spotted and binky was found but we had to check it out. We didn't see him anywhere. We even sat on her street near the food, no dogs at all came around. We did this several days in a row and then gave up. 2 weeks later the lady called me on a Sunday night. She said the dog was there now, “right now”. It seemed unlikly to me it was him, I mean afterall Pongo had been gone over six months but we got in the car and drove to her street anyway. There 'was' in fact a dalmatian running down the street but I knew immediately this did not look like my Pongo. Pongo was mostly white and this dog had way too many spots. We tried to catch the dog but he kept running away. I told my husband "it's not Pongo honey lets just go home ". My husband told me to Look at his head, "I think it is him". We got close enough for me to get a better look and it did look like Pongos head and face but the body was completely different, not at all like my boy. We tried to coax him to the car but he just continued to run away. He was running up her street towards the intersection and I knew we had to do something fast. I told my husband to drive right past him and park down the street with the dog running towards us, which he did. As the dog was approaching I yelled out the car window Pongo come here boy , but he ran right past us. My husband and I both began shouting "PONGO come on boy" "Here boy". The dog ran right past our car and then about ten to fifteen feet in front of us he suddenly just stopped short in his tracks..... It was like memories were flooding back to him all at once. His whole body started to shake almost convulsively as he ran back to our car and tried to climb in my passenger window. I was crying incoherently as my husband walked around the car and lifted my boy up onto the rear seat. Pongo had been gone 6 months and thirteen days to the day. I think he must have been running free all that time. His head was the same but his body was like a skeleton and that was why he looked like he had so many more spots then my pongo did, it was all the weight he had lost. Oh our prayers had been answered , we had our boy back. A trip to the vet an IV and a few weeks would have him good as new. Of course by now Binky and Shadow were best friends and Shadow and Pongo both being large males and territorial did not get along at all. We spent the last five years of Pongos life trying to keep them constantly separated. Stan actually got bit once trying to break up a jaw lock fight but we would not think of getting rid of any of our babies... When Pongo's time came Candice and I took him to the vet to have him put down peacefully. Pongo hated the vet with a passion but that day was different. He had been in pain for weeks and that day he just stepped out of the car and walked right in head held high. I think he knew it was time. I think he knew there would be no more pain. I literally laid on the floor of the vet stroking his soft fur and talking to him until he was asleep. Candice and I cried all the way home but it was the right thing to do.Oh here come the tears again. I still miss my Pongo too but this blog was not suppose to be about Pongo this is about my Shadow. You already know now how and where we got Shadow so here is a bit more of his story. Shadow was a Labrador mix but we had no idea what he was mixed with (or so I thought) I found out months later when shadow was nearing 110 pounds that they had him down as ½ Rottweiler. Shadow just loved to play with the my daughters and the grandkids. My grandson Corey who was four when we got him was pretty much raised with shadow and later trained him for me. Shadow use to come up behind Corey put his head between Corey's legs and swoop him up like a trained horse. He would very slowly walk a few steps with Corey on his back and then let him down. It was unreal the way this dog interacted with the kids, but especially Corey. (Corey is fifteen now and came over that Tuesady night and sat with Shadow crying). OK ack to Shadows younger days.... Later when Shadow was about three years old my daughter got a min-pin Chihuahua mix and called him Coomer. Coomer, the little dog would jump onto Shadows back and Shadow would taxi him around the back yard. It took Coomer 3 or 4 tries to get up there and balance himself sometimes but what an amazing thing to watch the two of them lol.
Shadow was like a big oversized baby that just loved everything and everyone. He loved the water and the beach. Sometimes when my husband and I would be in the back yard spa Shadow would jump in with us without due warning splashing all the water out. lol. We just couldn't keep him out of the spa and finally had to start covering it because his hair was clogging up the filters. Shadow just loved the little dogs too expecially the little shaggy one in the picture. They were best buds and she and my other dog are still looking for him and mourning. Shadow was about 120 pounds in his prime but the inactivity of the past few years due to his age and bad hip left him overweight and so he had grown to be a heaping 150 pounds.
On Friday October 26th 2012 my husband and I left on a trip for our 39th wedding anniversary which was Saturday the 27th. Shadow had been fine on Thursday although he had not really been fine for sometime. He seemed always exhausted and breathing heavy. We tried changing his diet and getting him to walk but at 150 pounds he just wanted to be a couch potato (well if he could have gotten up on the couch). Friday before we left I made a note to self that he had not eaten the food I set out. On Saturday my daughter who was watching mom and the dogs for us called to tell us that Shadow had thrown up. We thought perhaps he just was not feeling well, after all Thursday he was still eating and playing with the small dogs. On Sunday she called again and said that he had not eaten in 2 days.. Well Friday made three days so we cut our trip short and came home. When I arrived home Shadow was out on the side of the house where he never laid and did not want to get up or come in. It took us over an hour to coax him to stand up and come indoors. I knew he was dying even then. We kept him inside until morning and Stan took that Monday off so we could get Shadow in to see Dr Sears at 7:00 a.m. I wanted to put him down that morning because I could see he was suffering and you could see the cloudy in his eyes, it was not really Shadow anymore. I knew he was dying and I wanted to lay with him till he fell asleep like I did Pongo not leave him there feeling abandoned by the only family he had ever known. We had never left hm anywhere away from his bed and home. My husband would not hear of it and took out a care credit to pay the vet bills. They ran a full blood panel a bunch of X-rays and put him on a fluid drip and antibiotics $701.00. We were told we could pick him up Monday evening at 8:00 pm. When we got to the vet Monday night they already had many of his blood tests back. They showed us his numbers were so elevated , almost all of them. They said Shadow was suffering either kidney failure or a very bad kidney infection. They also said he might have a tumor because his calcium level was so high and wanted to do ultra sounds another $500.00. We refused the ultra sounds until we got further tests back, No point in testing a dog for cancer that is already dying of kidney failure, right. The vet agreed and suggested they could keep him on the fluids and antibiotics another day to try and flush out his kidneys further to make him comfortable. We agreed and left him there. Another almost $200.00. Tuesday night could not come quick enough for me. We went to pick him up around 7:30 pm. They walked us to the back to his kennel. He looked awful. Shadow was even sicker then when we brought him in. He looked up at me with eyes that said good bye and thank you but my husband was not ready to say good bye and accept the truth, Not yet. Though I tried to convince him to let Shadow go peacefully he insisted we take him home and put him on oral meds to see if he would improve. The vet said the way was he was breathing was not a good sign but my husband would not leave him there. It took five people to slide shadow on to a blanket and carry him to the car. We drove home slowly. When we got to our house I pleaded with Stan to turn around and take him back and have him put down. He insisted shadow would pull through . It took Stan and I twenty minutes to lift Shadow from the backseat to the driveway where I sat with him another thirty minutes until my daughter and her family came to help us slide him back onto the blanket and carry him to his bed which was in our bedroom. By now Shadows eyes were going dim and his tongue was looking purpleish. I knew it was just a matter of hours. Shadow died around 10:45 that night only 2 hours after we got him home . Part of me was and is so angry inside that my big boy had to suffer like that in his final hours and that my husband would not put him down in a humane way but I know Stan has a kind and loving heart and he truly believed we could get him well. Then there is this part of me that thinks in a way not leaving him there might have been ok... Did I really want shadow to die feeling abandoned by us? The only family he had ever known? He died in his own home in his own bed and maybe that was a good thing. My heart is broken and confused. This last photo was taken in May of this year with Stans mother Joan. I think it is the last photo ever taken of my Shadow. So...how do I go on now with life as usual with so many little reminders about the house? I am old and I have lost many pets over the years but this one was especially difficult for me because I watched him suffer so. I need my Shadow. Even Peter Pan knew you cant live without your Shadow. Thank you for reading this. I know it brought a tear to your eyes but I hope perhaps it brought some smiles too. I found myself smiling a lot at sweet and bittersweet memories as I wrote. xo shallimarRose © 2013 shallimarRoseFeatured Review
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Added on July 17, 2013Last Updated on September 20, 2013 Tags: true story, best friend, bittersweet, dog, unconditional love, loss, heartbreak, death, shallimarRose Author
shallimarRoseF W, WAAboutI am a singer, writer, poet, dreamer, believer..... I am an unconventional poet who has been writing rhyme since the age of five. I enjoy all styles of poetry. I write by ear not syllable count .. more..Writing
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