I found out today that my dad had to put my dog, Buddy down. He hurt his hip a few months ago, and the medication wasn't helping at all. He has just been in so much pain the last few months and since the vet couldn't help at all, my family decided that it was time to let him go. I know that he was super old, and its best for him that we let him go, but I can't seem to stop crying about it. I think if I talk about him for a few minutes it might help, so if you aren't into dogs, you probably won't want to keep reading.
My family got Buddy right before my 8th birthday. I was in Wisconsin visiting my cousin, and when they came to pick me up they brought him along as a surprise!
When we got home, we realized that having a new puppy and a newborn (my brother JJ was born like a month before we got Buddy) was pretty crazy. Buddy chewed EVERYTHING! All of my toys had bite marks or an arm or leg missing, my stuffed animals all had holes, my shoes had holes, even some of my clothes had holes from him jumping up on us. He was such a sweet dog, though. He was just always so happy to see us and play with us. Here is a picture of Buddy and JJ. JJ would climb all over Buddy, but Buddy was still so protective of him. He also loved to suck on JJ's pacifiers.
At this age, I had really bad nightmares pretty often. I still ran in to my parents room, but they kept telling me that I had to stop. When we got Buddy, he started sleeping on my bed every night. When I woke up with nightmares and saw him there, I knew that I was safe. I still had nightmares often, even up until I left for college, and he was always the one that I looked to for comfort.
We took him camping with us in Michigan when he was a puppy. He loved the water, but he didn't like not being able to sleep in the tent.
Before we got a fence put in our yard, we had to keep him chained up outside when he wasn't inside. One day, I went to go unchain him and bring him inside. When I knelt down to reach his collar, he scratched my leg up pretty good cause he was so excited to see me. I still have a 3-4 inch scar on my leg from that, and I hope it never goes away. It makes me think of how happy he was to see me whenever I look at it.
Buddy definitely had a hold on my heart. I would let him lick my face whenever he wanted even though it was gross and smelly. I would let him have occasion licks of my popsickles. I never got mad when he ended up scratching me because he was so excited to see me. I cried every night the week that he got sprayed by a skunk and wasn't allowed in the house to sleep in my bed. I never had much fun on the 4th of July with fireworks because I was so busy worrying about Buddy. (He was terrified of them!) It also just broke my heart whenever I would visit home after I left for BYU because he would follow me everywhere, and I felt so bad that I had to leave him again. I know he was ok with my family, and they also loved him a lot, but I always felt like he thought I was leaving him behind or something.
(You can kind of see him hiding behind me in this picture)
We had an electric underground fence put in. It worked pretty well, but sometimes if there was another dog or a cat on the other side of the fence, Buddy would run through anyways. When this would happen, I would just take some dog treats and walk along the border of the cornfield behind our house. I would find him pretty quickly and take him back home. One day, we couldn't find him, so I assumed he had jumped the fence. I went looking for him, but I couldn't find him anywhere. I went home and just cried forever because I was so worried. It turns out that my dad took him to Lowe's with him. Buddy jumped out of the car when my dad opened the door, and my dad drove home without him! He never even remembered that he took him with him until later that day when he saw me crying about it. He went back to Lowe's, and Buddy was still in the parking lot having a blast meeting new people.
It was always hard to go on vacation when we had Buddy. We tried taking him to someone else's house while we were gone, but he just made himself sick and wouldn't eat because he thought we left him. We ended up just leaving him at home and getting someone to come feed him every day. The reason that didn't work was because he was terrified of thunder storms, and in Indiana during the summer months, you have them all the time. We got home once from vacation and he had been so terrified during a storm that he had torn up our front entrance trying to get in the house.
Buddy absolutely loved walks. If someone would even just say the word, he would run and get his leash and jump all over us until someone finally took him out. Once he got bigger, he was so hard to take for a walk because he was so strong! I struggled for awhile, but soon enough I got stronger and didn't have to struggle anymore. When my friends would want to take him on a walk, they would always get mad that I wouldn't let them hold the leash. I would always warn them that he was going to pull and that they would have to pull back and not let him go, and they would agree. They always ended up letting him go because he pulled to hard, though. It frustrated me so much because then I would have to chase after him and try to grab his leash. A lot of times my mom would tell me that I would just have to come home and wait for him to come back. He would always come back once he was done exploring the woods and the neighbors, but we lived not even half a mile from the freeway, and I was always terrified that he would head that way. I always fought with my mom about her letting me go get him. I couldn't handle the thought that he would be run over by a car because I let him go or because I didn't go after him. Thankfully, he was always ok.
He was always trying to protect us. When JJ was a baby, he was very protective of him. Once, he found a raccoon in our garage and fought it out. My dad ended up having to go kill the raccoon with a shovel and make sure it didn't rabies because it had bit Buddy during the fight. That was pretty scary. He also had this thing against specific males. He hated my grandpa and one of my uncles. He could be having a great time wrestling with us, but the minute one of those guys walked in the room he would jump up and growl until they would leave. He got used to my grandpa over time because my grandpa would carry around treats to give to him. One time when my uncle came to visit, we were out doing errands. We told him that he could get in the house through the garage and wait for us to get home. He said he went up to the bedroom and he was putting his stuff down on the bed when he heard Buddy growling at him from the doorway. Apparently, Buddy had followed him inside and trapped him in the room. My uncle has been in the army since he was like 19, and he was too scared to move until we got home and told Buddy to leave him alone. I was so impressed when I heard that. I've never really seen Buddy look mean before, and he's just so sweet that it's weird to imagine that he could be that way.
He was always trying to catch birds and squirrels. One summer, we found that we had a nest of birds in our grill. We decided to leave it alone so that we could see the eggs hatch. They finally hatched, and the birds grew stronger. One day I walked past it and looked in, and there were like 6 little birds trying to fly around in there. I decided it was time to lift the lid and let them out into the world. I opened it up, and three of them flew right out. Turns out I totally didn't even think to make sure Buddy wasn't outside at this moment and he ended up catching one of them right in his mouth. I was so mad at him that day!
Our house sat right beside the woods in Indiana, and whenever he would start barking in the direction of the woods, I always thought either a bear or a kidnapper was out there, and I would get scared and run inside. For some reason, I was always afraid of bears even though I'm pretty sure they don't live anywhere near Indiana.
When we got our second dog, Tinkerbell, Buddy HATED her. He had had our family to himself for about 7 years, and he did not like Tinkerbell taking over. He eventually got used to her, but he always tried to avoid her. When he got older and Tink got bigger, Tink was a big bully to him so I'm not a big fan of hers. She's super cute, but actually really stupid. Buddy had learned some tricks, and he always seemed to know what we were saying to him, but Tink acts like no one ever talks to her, and she just always does whatever she wants. This is Buddy with Tink when she was a puppy:
When I was 15, I had braces on my teeth. One day while I was loading the dishwasher, Buddy was licking the plates. He wasn't allowed to do that, so I kept shooing him away. He kept coming right back, so finally I had had enough. I bent down, put my arms around his neck, and yanked him away from the dishwasher with all my strength. His reaction was to snap his head back at me to get me to stop. I let go of him, but somehow his tooth got caught on my braces. When he pulled away, he pulled my teeth with him! Turns out he had pulled out the front two teeth completely, and the rest of the teeth had all moved slightly forward. I was in so much pain! We called the orthodontist, and he said he would meet me at his office the next morning even though it was closed on Fridays so he could fix what he could. I was in so much pain that night, so my dad gave me a blessing. Turns out my front two teeth regrew their roots over night (they were still sitting there because they were still attached to the braces) and the rest of my teeth moved a little bit back to where they were. The orthodontist was still shocked about what happened, but he decided to leave everything where it was since it was moving itself back. It all ended up ok, but I always got teased for "making out with my dog" whenever I had an orthodontist appointment.
The last few days in Indiana before we moved to Idaho, Buddy knew something was going on. Every time someone would open up the car door, he would jump in and refuse to get out for hours sometimes because he didn't want to get left behind. Even when we finally did leave, it took forever to get him out when we stopped to rest at the hotel on our drive there. When we finally got to Idaho, all of us kids and the dogs had to spend the day in my parent's bathroom/closet so we wouldn't get in the movers way. Their bathroom was pretty big so we pulled a mattress in there and watched a movie or two. We also ordered pizza and took a nap.
For some reason, Buddy had this weird thing with hats, scrunchies, and gloves. I could never wear scrunchies when I was little because if I did, he would attack my head until he got the scrunchy out of my hair. When JJ was like a year or two old, he had his snowsuit on, and he was standing outside with us. Buddy grabbed his hat and ran around the yard with it while JJ was still attached. That was actually really funny. When we would put gloves on, he wouldn't try to run around with it, he would just attack your hands until you took them off. We ended up using that as a game inside to wrestle with him. It was pretty fun, but my mom would always get mad because it would really tear up the gloves. We never had gloves that didn't have at least one hole in them.
If you ever had food (especially popcorn), Buddy and Tinkerbell would both follow you around until it was all gone. This is my brother JJ. He took popcorn to his room to watch a movie on a laptop and both the dogs followed him there.
This is getting really long and I feel like I could go on forever so I should probably stop here. What I will always remember the most about Buddy is that he always knew how I was feeling. If I was happy, he would always wag his tail and have a party with me. If I was sad, he would come lay by me, put his head in my lap, and look up at me with his big sweet eyes until I told him it was ok. He was always there to comfort me, and I will always be grateful to him for that.
