RIP Skippy – IOTW Report

RIP Skippy

Monday, 22 May 2023, 21:58 BFH Uncategorized 37

This is the part that is tough. I painted SNS’s beloved Skippy.

Skippy, crossed the Rainbow Bridge around 0300 this morning.  Skippy had a good day out but became sick last night, and my wife was devastated when X rays and exploratory surgery revealed inoperable liver cancer, after a liver specialist said he was clear of it just two days before.  Skippy passed peacefully under anesthesia with my wife’s arms around him.  Skippy is now lying at the feet of our Lord next to his spirit sister Mini, our Chihuahua who he guarded faithfully in life and who went on before him, that you also memorialized beautifully. – SNS

Mini

37 Comments on RIP Skippy

  4. Oh, SNS. I’m so sorry to hear that. Breaks my heart to have you so happy with good news to be slammed with reality.

    As always, this is the hardest part of loving our fur babies. Those of us who have been through this wishes you peace in your pain and joy in your sorrow.

    As you know, the memories will sustain you and soon you will treasure the happiness you shared.

    God bless you and your family.

    20

  10. Lost my 10 year old 160 pound Dane last year so I know what you’re going through.
    The hard part is thinking he’s beside you when you are laying in bed.
    One of my favorite memories was driving down the road together in our jeep with his butt over the back of the backseat and his head on my shoulder while I was driving.
    Sorry about your loss my friend, you will see them again in a place without tears.

    15

  11. @SNS, may you and your wife always have the comfort of knowing that Skippy and Mini will live on for as long as you remember them and think of them. You’ve made that easier by having their images at hand every day by means of BFH’s extraordinary and beautiful paintings. The pain lessens over time but you can keep the joy!

    9

  12. SNS, I still remember your kind words when my Lia passed about a year and a half ago. I’m not as gifted as you regarding this, but know that I feel for you and your wife. You also will see your dogs waiting for you as you cross over the rainbow bridge.
    All the best,

    11

  14. My condolences SNS.

    They can be closer to you than those with genetic ties. My Sylvia will always be missed. There may be others, but none like THAT one ever again.

    I hope it makes a difference for you that many here know your pain.

    10

  15. Big ((((hugs)))) to you and your wife SNS. It’s such a sad thing and it breaks your heart. Be comforted that they had a wonderful happy life with you, spoiled and loved forever. 💐

    11

  18. Thank you all for your kind words. I just wrote an essay on this only to lose it to some Internet frisson sobI guess God doesn’t want me to post a slobbering TL/DNR trading on BFHs good graces. Maybe Ill say more later but I’ve been up for about 40 hours at this point so I’d be more incoherent than usual anyway. Probably why God wiped my last ramble bfore I posted it. I do have to say that BFH did an amzing job constrcting that exact Skippy portrait from two separate pictures, and I appreciate the work he did on both of these more than I can say. Special thanks too to Brad who knows my wife’s struggles with cancer though his own outreach and gets dogs too so I’m sure he kkows what the dog meabt tp her in recocery, and to Lady C for posting his foibles with the empathetic hand that only a true dog lover can. I appreciate you all and yhis community more than I can say, but I toook today to be with her and taje care of stuff and gotta be at work in 4 hours, so thank you all again for yoyr blessings and goodnight and God be with you.

    God bless, SNS

    17

  21. SNS – my sympathies and thoughts and prayers go to you and your family.. our pets are sometimes overlooked, but they re as much of our family as any blood relative.

    Skippy – go with God nd I know your family will meet you in Heaven

    9

  22. There’s nothing like losing your dog, their only fault is their shorter life span, it’s a bitch. I know all too well your loss and feel bad for Bro.

    5

  25. May the Lord God Almighty bless and keep you both. He blessed you with Skippy and your beloved pooch will be waiting for you when you are folded into the loving arms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

    Dogs are representatives of the Holy Spirit and may only dwell with us a short time with their completely selfless love to remind us all is not evil in this wicked and unjust world. The Lord just let’s us bo0rrow them.

    While it is impossible not to grieve be assured Skippy runs with a heavenly pack now free from pain and suffering.

    God has simply reclaimed another angel.

    9

  26. Skippy will forever be in your heart ❤️

    Our four legged critters always seem to take a piece of your heart with them when they pass on 😿

    Thoughts and Prayers to you and yours 🙏❤️🕊️

    7

  27. SNS, I am so sorry for your loss.
    Skippy and Mini sound like they were wonderful little fur friends.
    I think it’s amazing that God blesses us with the companionship of his sweet critters.
    I hope you are comforted by all the happy memories Skippy shared with you.

    5

  29. God give youpeace.

    I’ve “put down” 7 dogs the last 50 ears. Devistated ech time. God willing I’ll go before Angus. If so my son – who has a son Angus – will take him. If not I will again feel great sorrow!

    I clearly ame weird. To me dogs are family. They dont just humt with me they sleep with me. Sometimes got snickers at work when Navy blue pinstripe suit had white dog hairs on sleeve or pants. I did care; but not enough to banish my retrievers! Family!

    SNS. God loves you and your dogs; all of you.

    6

  31. SNS…….so sorry for your loss. A couple weeks ago a little country Catholic Church In Woolmarket Ms, held a special Mass for the repose of the souls of our beloved Pets.

    “One day we will see Our animals again in the eternity of Christ. Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures” Pope Paul the sixth I hope this consoles you tiny bit… Peace

    6

  36. I would like to thank everyone here for their empathy and understanding, their prayers and support, and thank our host BFH for opening the platform for it and for immortalizing these two so I can see them as they were and not as they left. Thanks and may the Lord bless you all as much as you have me.

    I did write a long, rambling piece around Hour 36 or so of his end-of-life journey that the Lord mercifully prevented me from publishing as it went into too much unpleasant detail, but now that I’ve had four hours of sleep and worked half a day my head is clear enough to capture the only things worth salvaging from that mental wreckage.

    One was that we started that day as any other. Skippy had had issues but we contracted a canine liver doctor who ASSURED us that wasn’t it, and put him on gallbladder medicine, so we thought Death’s shadow had temporarily passed. I had a day off thanks to bug bombing, so we loaded the fam including Skippy and went out to have dessert and dinner out of order, and rambled around in the sunshine with the dog eating ice cream and some Baconator that I wasn’t supposed to give him but did, with the gently chiding wife smiling anyway.

    Nothing special, just a nice time with the family together with the dog. We weren’t planning it but it was too nice not to.

    And thank God we did as it was the last time we ever could. 8 hours later, after we found him in unexpected distress when we returned from church, some frantic driving and escalating to vetrinary surgeon once there, he was gone.

    Never take life for granted. You never know when your hour is come. Or anyone’s.

    Two, how much our lives were touched by this silly little beast. He was a clown with a big bark, a North American Chowhound, a pee dispenser who didn’t always make it to the door who gave us many hours of complaining and anxiety, but also gave us far more.

    As Cisco says above, he gave us the love God bestowed upon him through His Holy Spirit. It’s a pure love that you don’t really appreciate until it is gone. This wasn’t a show dog, a hunting dog, a guard dog, nothing like that…but he was OUR dog, and in particular my WIFE’s dog, and he saw her through 11 years that had more than her share of pain and anxiety and loss, but he was always there by her side, sleeping near her or lying on her, watching her leave from the window or barking excitedly when she came back, no matter what thing life threw at her, including cancer and some other issues that sometimes seem to mirror his.

    He was no service dog, but he WAS a dog in service of the Lord to her, and in that capacity he is irreplacable.

    I miss the fuzzy little doofus myself. Hearing him charge into the room galloping on all fours at the opening of a peelable beef jerky wrapper was a sound and sight to behold. He was also an accomplished marshmallow theif and pizza hound extrodanare, but he always took his prize with a delicacy untypical of a dog, but then wolfed it like a pit bull once it was inarguably his.

    I opened a jerky yesterday, and didn’t have to share it. No one came in to fix me with a waifish stare and an expectant grin.

    Suddenly I wasn’t hungry any more.

    I fought for his life as best I could, for my wife, for myself, and for my oath to the Lord as I have stated here many times that all lives are worth fighting for as all are sacred to the Lord.

    But I have had it drilled into me by experience that sometimes everything is not enough. That sometimes God says no.

    And this was one of those times.

    I can intellectuallize it, whip out some bromides from the collection I built over the years (as the surgeon did as she put our dog to sleep for the final time in my wife’s arms, for which I do not blame her), compartmentalize it, bluesky it with thoughts of getting another dog as we have before and somehow this will make it all right.

    But none of that crap has any weight as the tears of the woman I have shared my life with for the last three decades soak through my shirt.

    I have to hit a balance at such times between wearing my game face and being her husband. Someone has to take care of the grotty business deals, interface with the vet and crematory staff, handle all the stupid little details without wadding up every time his name comes up, and in this case that someone has to be me. She’s a trooper, stronger than I and she will go on, but right now she needs me to be the adult, and so I must, but at the same time let her know a little that I am her husband and not some drone and comfort her with our mutual sorrow showing my empathy for her and understanding for how profound the loss actually is.

    Only through the aid of the Lord can I walk that rope. And only the love of the Lord will help us both to get over it.

    I have to have the strength in this case, but as stupid as it may seem to non-dog parents, I have to mourn too.

    And I thank you all for indulging that, and hope to be here for you when the time comes as well, as all good things must come to an end in God’s good time.

    And I apologize to our ringmaster for again rambling a bit and going far too long as is my wont, but as he captured their spirit in paint, I believe he understands their souls in a unique way as well and has the kindness to forgive me. I do go long but at least the Lord kept me from posting the last one with medical details and descriptions and pains that just didn’t need to be in here, plus some undoubted deadends, grammer errors, and misspellings as I was pretty fatigued then, physically and spiritually. But God uses people and I believe He has done so with your kindly comments and understanding of what it truly is to lose a beloved pet. I thank you all and once more ask the Lord to bless you at least as much as you have blessed me.

    “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
    Psalms 147:3

    God Bless,
    SNS

    2

Comments are closed.

iOTWreport.com ©2024 ----- iOTWreport is not responsible for the content of comments. All opinions in comments are solely the commenter's.