Category Archives: Tucker
a goodbye to our very dear friend
This morning Greg and I made the agonizing decision to say goodbye to our wonderful friend and companion Tucker. He had a very bad night last night and his quality of life has been suffering. I don’t really have the words, right now, to fully express our sadness. Tucker brought an incredible amount of joy to our lives. Some of you may remember that in August of 2009, we thought that we would have to put him down. I wrote about that experience on my blog. I’ve included the text of that post below.
I adopted Tucker from the Humane Society of Greater Akron shortly after Greg and I started dating. Greg had mentioned that he really liked dogs. (Now, imagine a cartoon light bulb blinking above my head. I like Greg. I want him to be my boyfriend. He likes dogs. I must get a dog.) So off I went to the Humane Society to find my new dog. I didn’t really know what type of dog I was looking for, I just new I wanted to adopt a dog that needed a good home. I filled out the form where they ask you lots of questions about the type of home you have and the amount of time you’d have to take care of a dog. They walked me back to a large room filled with dogs in individual kennels. All the dogs were up, jumping around and barking. All, that is, except for one dog; a mostly black largish mixed breed dog with some brown highlights. He was just laying there on the floor, pretty uninterested in what was going on around him. For me, it was love at first sight. The volunteer led me and Tucker out to the back yard of the Humane Society so that we could get acquainted. Tucker was very gentle, but again, didn’t express much interest in getting to know me. Later, I found out that Tucker had been adopted and returned a couple of times. He had been at the Humane Society off-and-on for about 2 years. He surely had some trust issues. Those folks at the Humane Society know what they’re doing. You don’t just pick a dog that first visit and take it home. Nope, they send you home to think about it. I did, and returned a few days later to adopt Tucker. I was now a pet owner. I loaded Tucker in the towel draped back seat of my VW and headed on what felt like the longest drive home ever. Tucker paced frantically back-and-forth in the car the entire ride home, hanging his head out one window, then the other.
That first night we mostly just stared at each other, sizing each other up. Oh, and I think I took him outside like forty times, scared to death he would “mark his territory” in the house. I think anytime he got within ten feet of a door, I would take him out. Yep, he was pretty empty by bed time, that first night.
It wasn’t long until Greg was up for a visit to see me, and I guess, Tucker too. They were a match made in heaven. Greg has some sort of mysterious power that dogs are attracted to. They hit it off instantly, and to this day, I know that Greg is Tucker’s favorite human. It doesn’t matter that I was the one who saved him and brought him home. But that’s ok. In November of that year, 2001, Greg moved in and the three of us were a family.
A couple of years later, Tucker began having some breathing issues and would occasionally bleed from the nose. We were concerned and took him to our vet. The vet said it seemed like it might be something cancerous, so he sent us off to a specialist who confirmed that diagnosis. She reported that Tucker had what appeared to be a cancerous tumor in his sinus cavity. She recommended radiation treatment in Columbus, but still gave him a life expectancy of about 6 months. Devastated, Greg and I decided to make Tucker as comfortable as possible for as long as we could. About the same time we switched his dog food to a different higher quality brand. That was back in 2003, needless to say that 6 month sentence has passed by more than 6 years. He still has occasional breathing spasms, but other than that, and a couple of fatty tumors he’s been a pretty healthy dog.
This all brings us back to last weekend. For four days leading up to last Saturday, Tucker had been very lethargic and had been having some rather awful blowouts in the house. By Saturday morning, we thought we had reached the time we would have to say goodbye to Tucker. He’s around 12 years old now, has nearly lost all of his hearing, and gets around at a pretty slow pace. We took him on his last walk around the neighborhood. I think I cried through most of it. I’ve never had an opportunity to have “lasts” with a person or pet before. It was heartbreaking.
I made an appointment with our vet and off we went. It was tough; the vet won’t make the ultimate decision for you. He laid out all of the options. At first, he had us convinced that Tucker had led a good long life, and that maybe now was time to let him go. Just as I was ready to go that route, he said we could run some basic blood tests to check on the over all health of Tucker. And then we could decide. That’s what we did. His tests came back mostly good. The vet gave us some anti-diarrheal medicine and we took Tucker back home.
Tucker remained pretty lethargic for a couple more days. He was put on a bland diet of white rice and boiled chicken, which he loved and lapped up in seconds. As of today he’s pretty much back to his old self. Sure, he’s a lot slower and walks around the block take a lot longer to complete. But it’s time we get to spend together, that’s just about us and nothing else. Greg and I know that ultimately, there isn’t a lot of time left for us to spend together with Tucker. We accept that, and just spend a few more moments appreciating this wonderfully gentle dog that has brought so much joy and love to our lives.
five senses friday #5
Oh my golly goodness. It’s that time of the week again. Time to share my five senses from the past seven days. Do me a huge favor and take a moment to share one, several or all five senses from your week. Just click up there on comment and tell me all about them.
seeing:
rain, thunderstorms, and all the green it’s creating.
tasting:
homemade blue cheese and bacon biscuits {pure amazingness} i promise to post the recipe this weekend.
hearing:
swim until you can’t see land by frightened rabbit.
smelling:
the tuckster. he needs a bath, badly.
feeling:
congested. hello mr. cold, it’s been tons of fun this week. But now it’s time for you to go.
favorite photos of 2009
365 days, 4013 photos.
Happy New Year. To commemorate the start of the new year, I thought I’d take a moment to look back. These are my 50 or so favorite photos from 2009.Click here to see the entire set. To view a slideshow of the photos, click here.
Additionally, to view past collections: click here for 2008, click here for 2007.
christmas vacation!
We’re finally to the point in our Christmas vacation that we don’t have to be anywhere at any particular time. We’re just taking the days, hours and minutes as they come. That’s not to say that the busy flurry of the holidays at the front end of our vacation weren’t wonderful. They were fantastic, filled with lots of family and friends and celebrating.
Christmas Eve: Greg worked during the day (but got home a little early). I ran errands, picked up a few last-minute gifts and did some baking to take to various get-togethers. We finished our evening with our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. A trip to Sheetz for made-to-order gas station sammies. Delicious!
Christmas Day: Woke up early…no presents to open since Greg began a new tradition of opening our presents to each other on Christmas Eve Eve. That’s right…two days early. Fine with me, I’m not one for waiting. Greg got me some nice computer software for organizing all of my recipes. It even makes shopping lists for you. I got Greg a new football game for his Xbox 360. Back to Christmas day, in the morning we headed to my sister’s house for lunch and hanging out. My sister has lived in Wooster for years, we somehow still managed to get lost. Greg was driving and had a bit of a headache. I had my nose in my iPhone and wasn’t paying much attention to the road. Eventually, I looked up and realized that I didn’t recognize where we were. Greg had forgotten to turn off Route 21 and we were getting closer and closer to Massillon. We finally got to my sister’s house and had a great time with Julie, Matt and the girls. We played several very spirited rounds of Zingo! We also got to meet the latest addition to the Miller clan, their dog Zoey. We met her in stages. It was delightful. Later that evening we joined our friends David & Marc and Tom & Brett for a showing of Sherlock Holmes at Cinemark. (The ban’s been lifted!)
December 26th (A.K.A. my birthday): Woke up, had a delightfully-bad-for-us McDonald’s breakfast. Hello McGriddle and Iced Coffee, I’ve missed you so. We met Michele for some shopping at West Point Market and Summit Mall. I got my “birthday outfit” from Greg at Eddie Bauer. It was an exciting trip. I’m now an Eddie Bauer XL. At one point in my life, not too long ago, I was an Eddie Bauer 3XL and had to order all of my clothes on-line or from the catalog. I then got down to a 2XL. I could shop in the store, but very often, all of the other fatties beat me out to the few 2XL’s in stock. The new XL world is wonderful! For dinner we joined a few friends for dinner at Pub Bricco in the Valley. We all feasted on gourmet burgers, chips, fries and onion rings. A culinary bonus: they serve diet Dr. Pepper. It was a birthday miracle!
December 27th: We headed down to Greenfield to visit Greg’s family for the holidays. Greg’s mother makes a wonderful roast. The meat is so tender and the potatoes and carrots are flavorful masterpieces. It’s a lot of fun to watch Greg interact with his mother, sister, brother, nieces and nephews. I’m so glad to be part of the family. We drove back in a bit of a snow storm and finished our day with a dog at our feet and salads for dinner to commemorate our 9th anniversary together.
The rest of the week so far: Lots of snow, a little cleaning, some more shopping, reading, game playing, and lots of relaxing.
let sleeping dogs lie
This is how we found Tucker on the landing at the top of the stairs. Deep in sleep with a very loud snore. I particularly like how is right leg is suspended in mid-air.
if cats have nine lives…
Last weekend was a stressful weekend for us and our dog Tucker.
First, a little background:
I adopted Tucker from the Humane Society of Greater Akron shortly after Greg and I started dating. Greg had mentioned that he really liked dogs. (Now, imagine a cartoon light bulb blinking above my head. I like Greg. I want him to be my boyfriend. He likes dogs. I must get a dog.) So off I went to the Humane Society to find my new dog. I didn’t really know what type of dog I was looking for, I just new I wanted to adopt a dog that needed a good home. I filled out the form where they ask you lots of questions about the type of home you have and the amount of time you’d have to take care of a dog. They walked me back to a large room filled with dogs in individual kennels. All the dogs were up, jumping around and barking. All, that is, except for one dog; a mostly black largish mixed breed dog with some brown highlights. He was just laying there on the floor, pretty uninterested in what was going on around him. For me, it was love at first sight. The volunteer led me and Tucker out to the back yard of the Humane Society so that we could get acquainted. Tucker was very gentle, but again, didn’t express much interest in getting to know me. Later, I found out that Tucker had been adopted and returned a couple of times. He had been at the Humane Society off-and-on for about 2 years. He surely had some trust issues. Those folks at the Humane Society know what they’re doing. You don’t just pick a dog that first visit and take it home. Nope, they send you home to think about it. I did, and returned a few days later to adopt Tucker. I was now a pet owner. I loaded Tucker in the towel draped back seat of my VW and headed on what felt like the longest drive home ever. Tucker paced frantically back-and-forth in the car the entire ride home, hanging his head out one window, then the other.
That first night we mostly just stared at each other, sizing each other up. Oh, and I think I took him outside like forty times, scared to death he would “mark his territory” in the house. I think anytime he got within ten feet of a door, I would take him out. Yep, he was pretty empty by bed time, that first night.
It wasn’t long until Greg was up for a visit to see me, and I guess, Tucker too. They were a match made in heaven. Greg has some sort of mysterious power that dogs are attracted to. They hit it off instantly, and to this day, I know that Greg is Tucker’s favorite human. It doesn’t matter that I was the one who saved him and brought him home. But that’s ok. In November of that year, 2001, Greg moved in and the three of us were a family.
A couple of years later, Tucker began having some breathing issues and would occasionally bleed from the nose. We were concerned and took him to our vet. The vet said it seemed like it might be something cancerous, so he sent us off to a specialist who confirmed that diagnosis. She reported that Tucker had what appeared to be a cancerous tumor in his sinus cavity. She recommended radiation treatment in Columbus, but still gave him a life expectancy of about 6 months. Devastated, Greg and I decided to make Tucker as comfortable as possible for as long as we could. About the same time we switched his dog food to a different higher quality brand. That was back in 2003, needless to say that 6 month sentence has passed by more than 6 years. He still has occasional breathing spasms, but other than that, and a couple of fatty tumors he’s been a pretty healthy dog.
This all brings us back to last weekend. For four days leading up to last Saturday, Tucker had been very lethargic and had been having some rather awful blowouts in the house. By Saturday morning, we thought we had reached the time we would have to say goodbye to Tucker. He’s around 12 years old now, has nearly lost all of his hearing, and gets around at a pretty slow pace. We took him on his last walk around the neighborhood. I think I cried through most of it. I’ve never had an opportunity to have “lasts” with a person or pet before. It was heartbreaking.
I made an appointment with our vet and off we went. It was tough; the vet won’t make the ultimate decision for you. He laid out all of the options. At first, he had us convinced that Tucker had led a good long life, and that maybe now was time to let him go. Just as I was ready to go that route, he said we could run some basic blood tests to check on the over all health of Tucker. And then we could decide. That’s what we did. His tests came back mostly good. The vet gave us some anti-diarrheal medicine and we took Tucker back home.
Tucker remained pretty lethargic for a couple more days. He was put on a bland diet of white rice and boiled chicken, which he loved and lapped up in seconds. As of today he’s pretty much back to his old self. Sure, he’s a lot slower and walks around the block take a lot longer to complete. But it’s time we get to spend together, that’s just about us and nothing else. Greg and I know that ultimately, there isn’t a lot of time left for us to spend together with Tucker. We accept that, and just spend a few more moments appreciating this wonderfully gentle dog that has brought so much joy and love to our lives.
the cookies are everywhere
It’s that time of year again…the cookies have arrived from the girl scouts. You remember, those cookies you ordered a month or two ago. Those cookies that you planned to freeze, yes, that’s why you bought four boxes of thin mints…to freeze them so you could enjoy them for many more months to come. But they’re gone now, aren’t they? You ate every last one. Well, that’s a little glimpse into my cookie inner-monologue. Insightful, huh? Yup, bought a lot of cookies. I had three dealers this year, that’s kind of embarrassing. At any rate, I didn’t eat them all myself. I left several boxes at work for co-workers and I served some at my condo association board meeting. At first, it felt weird to serve prepacked cookies to guests, but after a long day at work, you get over these types of things.
Well today, I had the day off. This morning the carpet cleaners stopped by to de-Tucker our carpet. We’ll see how long that lasts. I ran errands after that, came home and decided to make some cookies. I was torn, I really wanted to make my mini-cheesecakes with oreo cookie crust, but then I came across a recipe for peanut butter and jelly cookies. How could I resist? I loves me some peanut butter and jelly. Perhaps not as much as my sister Julie, who has a pb&j sandwich for lunch nearly every day. I bet she’d like these cookies too. Anywho, here’s the recipe if you want it. It’s from Rachael Ray…you can practically hear her screaming in the background as you make them. That girl has lost all volume control on her talk show…it’s nearly unwatchable…and yet I still watch from time to time.
A tray of cookies ready for the oven.
I normally strive for perfection, but I find that little extra drop of strawberry jelly charming.
Cooling cookies, just before being streaked with peanut butter icing.
this morning
Happy Tuesday. I go in to work late today because of an event tonight. I did, however, still have an 8 a.m. meeting at City Hall this morning for a community group that I serve on. The meeting was productive and done in just over an hour. I braved a few snow flurries and headed to my favorite breakfast stop in the area, Flury’s in Cuyahoga Falls. With a full stomach and a cookie to-go, I headed back home to find Tucker in his new favorite spot. His upstairs bed at the foot of our bed. It’s a pretty room, but I think that dog bed is more comfortable than his other bed downstairs.
