Thank you for the opportunity to tell you about my little girl, whom I miss everyday. She was 16 years old when I lost her. She was born in a puppy mill and resided there for a year and a half. She never learned to be a puppy. Those things were beyond her and though I tried, she never really got it. She was my confidant, the keeper of my secrets, my everything. She had a compadre named Kash. He passed away at the age of 5 after being stepped on by a 90-lb. lab. He lived 10 days after the accident. He was my first heartbreak. I had him from the age of 5 weeks.
Ruby started going down hill within in months after he passed. The vet diagnosed her with diabetes. She lived a year after the initial diagnosis. Her liver swelled to the size of a football and was as hard as one too. It was squeezing out her other organs, and pushing her diaphragm up and blocked her lungs. She had to lay over the edge of the couch to open herself up to breath. Towards the end, she started panting from panic. She had this fear in her eyes that pleaded, “Mommy, help me.”
After several sleepless nights, we made a trip to the vet with not bringing her home with me as an option. Well, after we got there, that was my only option. I could not bear to watch her suffer. We (Ruby and I) had a long talk at the vet’s office and we shed many tears together as she gave me her permission to let her go.
She fell asleep in my arms, and we came home together, where we buried her under the Japanese Weeping Cherry Tree, on the opposite side from Kash. They are both together waiting on me on the Rainbow Bridge. She was always so thankful to me for giving her a home where she eventually ruled the roost: my husband, Kash, and always me. I cannot tell you how badly she is missed, but I still feel her here at times. It may be just a look in the eyes of an abandoned dog, a lost or hurt dog. Her heart will always be with me. I am actually looking for another Dachshund, around two years old — male or female, it doesn’t matter. I have a male 2-year-old Dachshund named Opie; he’s a piebald and he needs a buddy. He loves kids, cats and other dogs. Rubisue was one of a kind. She was mine and I was hers. Thank you for letting me tell you about her. She truly was the joy of my life.–Debbie Mullins
