This week we said goodbye to our 17-year-old rat terrier. He had a good run and was a faithful, though sometimes ornery, companion. Dan and I are dog people. Our families both had dogs and we grew up with them. Dan’s sisters even took their family dog to our wedding reception and the dog is with the family in some of our wedding pictures.
Having three children in 18 months proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially when Dan was in graduate school working on a doctorate. Living in married student housing put the kibosh on having a dog. After we moved into our own home, the kids kept asking for a dog. Around Christmastime our local paper published letters to Santa; some elementary school classes wrote them as an assignment. When we spotted our daughter’s letter to Santa, it was all about her desire for a dog. We still refer to it as her “If I had a dog” missive.
After the holidays were over, we found a dog, a little rat terrier who had spent its days in an outdoor pen during a very cold winter. For the rest of his life, he would seek to be as warm as possible. We named him Tigger (T-I-double Gher-Er).
Tig became part of the family. This weekend, a friend told me that her favorite Becque family Christmas letter was the one Tig “wrote” which was subtitled “The Dog Who Won the Lottery.”
Tig traveled with us wherever we went. He loved to stay in hotels (and was likely Drury Hotels’ #1 fan!). He didn’t mind 16 hour car rides. He, however, did not play well with others. Whenever he saw any of his doggie “cousins” he would bark, even though they were guests in the same house and encountered each other frequently. After a barking session, he would usually be banished to an upstairs bedroom. We love the picture below. Both dogs are now gone, but suffice to say there was no barking at this moment. There was some cut of meat being carved above their heads. Getting a handout was the only thing on both their minds.
Tig is the dog in the sweatshirt.
After the kids left for college, all at once it seemed, Tig became extremely spoiled. We doted on him, more than we had ever doted on our children. Since October, I have been working at home. As Tig’s abilities lessened, his world, which had been any comfortable surface in the house, usually our bed or his “Uncle Al” chair (so named because of the chair’s previous owner), became a little dog bed and blanket across from where I now sit typing this. There I could keep my eye on him. When he started to get up, I knew he had to go outside. At first it was just shepherding him out. Lately, it meant quickly carrying him out.
Tig in his doggie bed
His quality of life declined. He could no longer see; he could not hear. We loved him anyway. I kept hoping that he would just fall asleep one night and not wake up. But that did not happen. We took that final trip to the vet’s office, a task we had been dreading.
Finding a new dog to love is on our to-do list and we hope we find one who can fill Tig’s shoes (and wear his old doggie clothes!).
Thank you for reading this rare non GLO post. My heart wasn’t into writing about anything else today, although I will offer my congratulations to Tri Delta Meryl Davis for winning Dancing With the Stars!
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com. 2014. All Rights Reserved.
