Since Surfguy had a sad dog tale, I thought I'd provide the tale of the most amazing dog I've owned (out of about a dozen). [mloo] When I was 10, my dad went to the pound to search for one of our dogs who had run away and he saw a dog he simply had to have. He was a little tank, looked kind of like Benji, and was full of more fight than any person I've met. My dad would eventually swear that he was a Tibetan Terrier, but he was actually just a mutt. I can't recall when he was named Murphy, so I'll just use that name from now on. Murphy, a puppy, had one day left before he was euthanized, so my mom went to pick him up from the pound with my best friend. I refused to go because I didn't want to see all the dogs in their cages awaiting their demise. I waited at home alone. The day they took him, my mom had to stop by the grocery store with my friend, and they left him in the car. When they returned, he'd shat on the floor of her Fiero, so my mom took the turd, wrapped it in a plastic bag from the store, and left it for someone to discover in a shopping cart. My friend was giddy at the prospect of someone finding that bag of crap, of course. A few years went by, he kicked all sorts of ass with his personality, and Murphy dug his way under the gate when we weren't home. He got hit by a car and broke his front leg. A neighbor witnessed him get hit, then dig his three-legged self back under the gate to wait for our arrival. He wore a cast for a couple of months. We had a boxer and a German Shepherd who would get into vicious fights, and Murphy would defend the Shepherd, despite being outweighed by the boxer by about 100 pounds (yes, that big) to 25. The boxer took his eye. I had to take Murphy to the vet to get his eye fixed, and as I waited there with him, Murphy tried to show his pride against the biggest dog I've seen in my life. It was one of those wolf dogs, maybe a Malamute, about the size of a tiger compared to tiny Murphy. Someone waiting with their dog came up to me and said about my gimpy one-eyed dog, "I just wanted you to know, you have the best dog here." So, Murphy's about 14 now, and we move houses. All of our dogs escape on day two of the new home. The Shepherd gets hit by a car, our chow is done, and I take her to get euthanized. Murphy is nowhere to be seen, and we assume he's gone. Six days after he disappears, we get a call from a guy mowing ditches over a mile from the house. He'd been able to read the dog's tag, though with much push back from Murphy. We rush over to get him, and the guy tells us Murphy wouldn't let him near him (I suppose except to read the tag). Murphy is paralyzed from the waist down, lying in several inches of ditch water. As soon as he sees my mother and me, he's beaming like only Murphy could, and we rush him to the vet. They perform surgery and keep him there for a week, but say there's little chance he'll ever regain movement in his back legs. They advise my mom to lay him on his back and move his back legs, whose feet are pointed and curled down, like a bicycle, and to hope that he returns to some semblance of his former self. This goes on for a week, and my dad suggests that he get him a wheelbarrow apparatus so he can move around himself. (They would walk him outside to do his business by holding his back legs up.) I plead to my dad that this is no life to lead and it's time to put him down. After a week, he comes home with my mom, having made the horrible decision to euthanize Murphy. They open the door, and Murphy comes running to them. My friend comes down from DFW to see Radiohead with me, and we make a stop at the vet with my mom and Murphy. They arranged a pizza party for my dog, with a big banner across the room that said, "You're our hero Murphy." The vet said she'd never done anything like that in her 20 years of practice. He lives another year before we have to put him down because my dad got cancer. I have no idea how much longer he would have lived beyond his 16-ish years, but his strength will live on as long as I do, at the very least. [/mloo]
Great story until the end. #1, I was sad to hear about your father (I lost mine to a long illness), and #2 trying to figure out why Murphy had to be put down because your Dad became ill. Anyway, pretty amazing story.
Because we had bigger issues to deal with, and he was really old, and near the end. He would never stop till he died.
We also put down another dog at the same time, who was one year older. I watched them both die with my dying father.
