She’s Gone

In her prime she could catch flyballs. I could throw a tennis ball as high as I could. My Dalmatian dog, Dottie, would snatch it, run it back to me and head on back for another throw. She was great at wormburners also. Those are the kinds of balls that skid along the ground, burning the back of the worms in the ground. She once made a Wille Mays over the head catch. Yes, my Dottie was a great player.

Deaf from birth, Dottie compensated for that defect by honing other skills to make up for it. I don’t know if being deaf ever hurt her. I don’t think she would have listened if she could have heard. Dottie has an extraordinary ability to smell things. She also had an uncanny ability to know when you were around even if she had not seen you. She was an amazing dog.

Dottie had diabetes for the last four years of her life. On the end the insulin quit working. Her blood sugar rose to heights off the scale. For the four years though my wife and I gave her two shots per day and she did fine. We did well also. Dottie has lost most of her eyesight by the end. That did not slow her down much. She had the yard and streets we walked on mapped out pretty well. Rarely did she miss a turn or forget to step up for a curb.

I really don’t want to write too much about it all right now. I will do so more over the weekend. I just want to go to bed now and rest. I need to close my eyes and remember my baby in her heyday. I will get on with living and the healing tomorrow.