Goodbye, old friend.

Today we said goodbye to a great farm dog, Mike. Doug adopted Mike in December of 2003 from a neighbor as he was the son of Doug's beloved dog, Gus.  Mike wasn't quite 10 and in January the skin ailments from which he had always suffered, started to take a turn for the worst, becoming more noticeable in February. He would go through spells of skin eruptions, usually when I would fail to make the special garlic-based vegetable mixture that was part of his ration. In March, we realized he wasn't clearing up, and needed to treat him for mange. We consulted with our homeopathic vet after the peroxide/boric acid treatment we had found wasn't clearing things up. He recommended homeopathic sulfur internally and sulfur lime dip to his body. We ordered the liquid lime dip and treated him as much as we could between the blizzards we seemed to have every week. This past week, I had hernia surgery on Thursday and so Thursday and Friday, I couldn't doctor Mike with his morning dose of sulfur and vitamin c. Friday, he took a turn for the worst. Saturday, he stopped getting up to go outside, and Saturday night he wailed in pain all night. This morning, he was pretty "out of it", dying.  Doug had to do one of the hardest things imaginable, shoot his own dog. Put him out of his misery. Ahh...so sad.

Mike was such a character.  He loved seeing all the people come to the dairy, eager to greet everyone. He was always stealing bones from all the other dogs on the farm. When we would come home, he would wail a welcome and rub his face between our calves. He had the habit of going out to the chicken house when it was close to the house, and walking up inside and stealing eggs out of the nest box. His number one skill was finding the best shade on the farm. Having some St.Bernard and Husky, he was always very warm sporting his dense and beautiful coat. One of his more notable habits was walking the center yellow line up the road to the dairy from the house, something his dad, Gus, did also.

It seems like an end of an era...In the 9 years I have know Doug, Mike has been here...and now he is not.