Goodbye Wally

Yesterday Wally the long term foster woke up for the last time. His congestive heart failure had finally caught up with him, and his quality of life had been reduced to nothing.

Wally came into our lives at the right time. Just days after my father passed away The Pie got a call from the Humane Society. She called me right after she hung up with them and asked me if I would mind it if we took in a chihuahua that was probably going to die in a few months (more than likely a few weeks) in order to let him live out his final days in a happy way. I reluctantly agreed, and she brought him by the uptown on her way home to introduce him to me. He was a timid looking piece of shit little dog, but I couldn't see the harm in letting him stay with us.

Wally ended up at the Humane Society in the most unusual way. A very nice citizen saw him at a garage sale in a cage for $15 (the owners were selling everything they had since they were losing their home). She bought him and took him to the Humane Society where they looked him over and diagnosed his condition and gave him his sad prognosis.

Wally defied the odds and lived another 20 months. He was grumpy at times, but sometimes all the wheezing and hacking got to him and made him sore. Other times he was happy and loving, crawling under our covers at night and demanding attention when he needed it. Our two other dogs (a found Shelty and a found medium sized mutt) got along with him swimmingly and treated him like he had always been there.

We knew this time would come, but it didn't make it any easier. I never, ever, ever thought I could love a chihuahua, but I was wrong.

Sad post, I know. I've read plenty of similar posts over the years on other blogs, and I realize it's just a cathartic way of dealing with it.

So let's do some good with it...

Support your local Humane Society. Give them a bag of dog food, take some time to short term foster some cute kitties and puppies for a couple weeks, donate cash money, give them your time and scoop poop for a few hours... whatever it takes. Dogs don't start wars and cats don't run Ponzi scams. They're like little people with slightly more fur and less evil tendencies, but they don't have opposable thumbs which makes it hard for them to find gainful employment, so they most definitely could use your help.

I may be taking a day or two off, but I'll be back Monday for sure.