Our beloved Brooke

It all started with a dream. The year was 2009, the kids were ages 5 and 3. I had recently had to say goodbye to my dog and best friend of 14 years, Lucy. We had moved to our house in Mount Dora, started to settle in the community there,  built a boat dock on the lake, and bought a little bowrider with plans of tubing, fishing, and spending time together as a family on the water. Then one night I had a dream, we were getting off the bowrider and walking up the dock. With us was a black lab, named Brooke. Unlike my dog Lucy, who was terrified of water, she was happy to be on the dock, happy to have spent the day boating with us. In my dream she felt like a part of our family, comfortable to go with us anywhere we wanted to take her. I woke up and told Kim about my dream. She was hesitant at first, there was a lot going on in our family at the time, but being the dog lover that she is she agreed. And so we went looking for a female black lab.  It was important to us that we get her as a puppy.  The kids had never had a puppy before, in fact their only experience with dogs was with those that were aging and infirm. They had no idea that a dog could also be a playmate.

After much searching we finally found our Brooke.

At first we weren’t positive that puppy still knew how to walk, the kids carried her around so much.

But she quickly outgrew their ability to carry her and became the dog I had dreamed about, an integral part of our family.

She was a playmate for our children.

She went everywhere with us: road trips, boating, camping, and of course moving onto Wonderstruck

She was comfortable with other animals.

She always just wanted to be wherever the kids were.

In fact, we always joked the kids couldn’t get off the boat without us knowing, because she would stand watch until they returned.

Unfortunately this last year was a rough one for her. She already had arthritis, and then developed Canine Degenerative Myelopathy. We tried to stay on top of her pain from arthritis with medicated food, nutritional supplements, pain medications, and weekly injections. As her spine and nerves got weaker her back legs started slipping out from under her so we tried foot salves to increase traction, rubber backed throw rugs all over our hardwood floors and tile, and had her wear rubber booties. We even took her for acupuncture injections, trying to slow the progression of this disease.

Unfortunately over the last couple of weeks we realized that we had reached the point that her days of misery far outnumbered her moments of good.

 

So on Tuesday, October 30th, we did what knew we had to do: break our own hearts so that she didn’t have to suffer anymore.

 

 

We will always remember our sweet Brooke.  How she would greet us at the door carrying her favorite stuffed animal in her mouth, how she chewed the creepy eyeballs out of all of Aislin’s stuffed animals and I had to replace them with buttons. How she ate everything: an entire Gingerbread house kit (hard candy, cellophane and all), decorative Thanksgiving gourds, 2 bags of chocolate covered espresso beans, even an entire rotisserie chicken carcass.  For years, when we would call the vet that would be their first question, “What did she eat now?” We remember how she liked to lay in front of the fire or in the sunshine until her black fur was hot to the touch.  We remember how patient she was with Skipper when he first came home and he was so scared, and how after two weeks she had earned his trust and they became fast friends. We remember how she would plant herself in the kitchen anytime someone was cooking hoping that something would drop on the floor, she definitely kept the house clean of any crumbs. How she would come up behind us and poke her head through our thighs so we would have to pet her before we could continue walking. We remember how she didn’t just wag her tail but wagged her whole body with joy.

And now though we are grieving we try to live in gratitude. Thank you for coming into our lives. Thank you for being a playmate for our children and a loving companion to our family. Thank you for what you have taught us by embodying unconditional love.