You know, it’s funny.  Christie was the dog we didn’t choose to live with us but came as a foster and just never left.  The mixed feelings I have about her going are confusing and a little uncomfortable at times.  We loved her.  How can you not love someone who is so devoted and needs to be loved so badly?  But it wasn’t like some of the other fosters we had in the  past.

Christie was so needy.  She’d been through so much in her life.  She was happy, but at the same time, there was an anxiousness about her.  She always seemed to be on the lookout, a little uncertain, worried, lost, never quite settled.  Here with us, she found a place where she could at least be comfortable.  There were some scrambles with the other dogs, but for the most part, life was peaceful.  We crated her as little as possible; and while there was a period when she felt more comfortable in a crate, the last 3 years, she was no longer attached to it.  A great thing for a dog who had been kept in one constantly at the mill. She loved to spread out in the floor and just lay there.  She liked a soft bed, though she had a tendency to chew on them.  Christie….was Christie.

Looking back over those last couple of weeks, I think there were some signs and we just mistook them for other things.  Suddenly, she wasn’t able to go all night without peeing in her crate.  She actually peed in the floor a couple of times.  The other dogs got on her nerves more.  She was more talkative than usual.  The shaking was a bit worse.  But with a dog like her, sometimes, you mistake things for just being who she is.

No matter what, Christie was happy.  That was always the case.  She was happy to be alive and happy to have a place to lie in the sun or in the shade.  To stand on the deck by the puppy door and survey her world.  Christie was just happy to be.

In our minds, I think, she was a permanent foster.  We took her when she had no place else to go.  We gave her another chance when all of her chances seemed to be used up.  We bought her time to see what the world should have been like.  And yesterday as we held her and watched her slip away, I think she loved us back.  She passed with people who loved her, held her, talked to her, who chose to be with her.  And in the end, I think for any of us, that’s what matters.  We should all be so lucky.