Lena
Greetings to everyone.
Over the last several months, Xavier matured enough to really appreciate our Dalmatian, Lena. She became a constant source of amusement for him.
He would chase her around the back yard and the house. He would sit in her doggie bed with her, which she did not like and quickly left when he joined her (usually to come to an adult and with puppy-dog eyes plead to get her bed back). He would feed her kibble, bacon, cookies, Cheerios, chips, carrots and just about anything he should be eating, but was not.
In fact, Xavier's first two-word sentence on record was yelling "Shut up!" at her barking. He loved his doggie (or "augg-ie" was how he often pronounced the word).
Rebecca and I talked about getting more pictures of Xavier and Lena together, but we could never get that to work out. Lena seemed to be keenly able to avoid the camera, except when she photo-bombed them.
Xavier is a total camera cheeser. As soon as he saw a camera come out, he stopped playing with Lean and ran to smile at the camera (possibly with the hope of getting his hands on it as well). So, we have very few pictures of Xavier and Lena together.
In her younger days (or even a few years ago), Lena would have loved such attention as Xavier took to showering her with. However, these last few months she really slowed and showed her age. She had a degenerative disease with her nervous system, she was old, growing weaker and slower. She only wanted gentle petting, food, water and a warm, comfortable place to sleep the day and night away. She no longer liked the days of action such as Xavier hoped she would.
Sadly, the rigors of thirteen years of age caught up with Lena quickly as the cold weather moved in. She slept all the time, was too stiff to move much of the time and no longer able to realize she needed to go outside. She was also showing the occasional tendency to nip when disturbed.
Monday, November 23rd we made the call. We took Lena in for her final vet visit. I would have noted this last month, but it seemed such sad news.
Today, I came across a picture of Xavier (unknowingly being photographed) showing affection to Lena. It made me happy we have a few of these pictures, and this one, taken July 31st is a good memorial to her.