Memorial to Barney
A few weeks ago, we lost our beloved "pet" dog Barney. Here's a memorial to him.
Not Just "Man's" Best Friend, But Every "Man's" Best Friend
We got Barney when we lived in Vermont. At the time, we had our first dog JoJo, who had terrible separation anxiety (which later turned out to be a good thing when she needed to be trained as my first Service Dog). We decided to get another dog to be her companion. That dog was Barney.
When we went to look at Barney's litter, each little 4-week old puppy looked completely different. But Barney stood out because he was the only one that was brown and white. So we chose him.
On the way home, we were trying to decide what to name him. We both thought "Barney" at the same time. For some reason, he seemed kind of dorky, like Barney Fife. That name certainly came to fit him.
Barney was a very easy puppy to housebreak and train. We had JoJo there to teach him dog-etiquette and the rules of the house.
At the time, I was getting very sick, very fast. So Rick spent the most time with Barney when it came to training and bonding. Barney quickly became Daddy's boy.
Once we moved into a house in Vermont, we learned just what a goof-ball Barney really was. He would run around the yard like a little deer, jumping in the air to grab the sticks Rick would hold up. He would also bury his rawhide treats in the yard, only to dig them up later and bring them inside the house full of dirt and bugs.
One day Barney got out the door and ran away. Apparently he had gone over to the nearby farm and proceeded to eat every bit of cow-poop he could find. I know this because when he finally did come back home, he puked all that cow-poop up in the living room. What a mess.
We had two acres of land at this house, so we decided to make the most of it for the two dogs and installed the Invisible Fence system. This is where a wire is run underground and the dogs wear receiver collars that will shock them if they walk over that wire. We had this wire installed all around the property and around the woods that were in the back part of the lot. This gave the dogs plenty of land to explore.
We spent many days training the dogs so they would learn where the perimeter was. Finally we decided they were sufficiently trained and had our first test of letting them out off-leash.
Barney promptly tried to run away, presumable back to the cow farm for some yummy cow patties. He ran over the underground wire, yelped, and then ran back to us...again going over the wire and again yelping.
He never tried to run away again.
When we moved here to Texas, we had a lot of recording and musical equipment that we didn't want to trust a moving company to move. So Rick used our equipment truck to drive it down here to Texas. Barney was his traveling companion for the long trip. Barney always sat in the seat of our vehicles like a little man. He would sit straight up looking out the window.
Once we moved into our house here in TX, Barney really became the man of the house. When Willie came to us, he was only 8-weeks old. Barney quickly informed Willie about the house rules and how dogs here are supposed to behave. Barney's domination over Willie was established very early on, and remained throughout his life. It was kind of comical to see little Barney come over to big muscular Willie and give Willie the stare-down. That's all it took for Willie to obey Barney's wishes.
Barney was diagnosed with Cushing's Disease at the age of nine. It was found during routine blood-work in preparation for a teeth cleaning procedure. But Barney had no outward symptoms of this disease whatsoever. We were very lucky that Barney was symptom free for many years.
What Barney eventually succumbed to was a large tumor on his liver. Every time new symptoms would appear, we would be able to combat them with medication. But in the end, no more medication could help. And that was when we knew it was time.
The hardest part about the day Barney died was not actually having to make the decision. It was the thought of having to tell every person Barney had touched that he was gone. The many people in our neighborhood who knew Barney, all the staff at our veterinarian's office, and especially our family.
Watching our veterinarian Lisa and her vet tech Crystal sob while administering the shot touched my heart. I knew that Barney was in the best hands, had the best care he could get throughout his life, and was truly loved by them.
I always had some guilt about my relationship with Barney, about how I was in the early stages of my disability and was very depressed during most of his formative years. About how I was getting sick very fast when he was young and how I never was able to participate in his early training. And how, later on, I needed to concentrate on not only training my service dogs, but also forming strong bonds with them.
But I've come to realize that Barney understood all this and was the epitome of the dog that loved unconditionally. He never demanded anything from me. It was Rick he went to for affection and attention, and for his long walks at night. But when I went to Barney to give him love, he always gave it back to me with the same attention and gusto he gave to Rick.
I've also learned that it doesn't matter if your beloved dog passes suddenly at a relatively young age as JoJo did, or if they live a long and very happy life. The pain and loss is just as great.
But more importantly, it doesn't matter if that beloved dog was your special service dog, or "just a pet", the grief is just as painful. And that tells me that even though I felt as if I'd never had the opportunity to bond with Barney the same way I did with my service dogs, and even though he was more bonded with Rick, Barney's impact on my life was just as great and just as important as any other dog's has been or will ever be in my life.
I'm glad to have been a part of his life. I know he'll be waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge, and I can almost bet that when the time comes, he'll run faster than any of my service dogs to come greet me. That's just his way.
I'll miss him dearly.
Comments