Throwback Thursday: Edition No. 6

Labor Day week­end is always a tough one for me. On the Thurs­day just prior, 1998, Matthew woke up and said, “Mama, I’m going out in the back­yard to say ‘good morn­ing’ to the dogs.”

A few moments later, he yelled for me. “Mama, Lady won’t wake up.”

My heart sank.

Sure enough, our beloved Golden Retriever, Lady, had died in her sleep. We’d had her for 13 1/2 years, after the neigh­bors aban­doned her, the vet lit­er­ally brought her back from the brink of death, and I nursed her for many months.

At the same time, my beau­ti­ful T.C., pic­tured with me above in 1982, was dying. And I was self­ishly pro­long­ing the inevitable.

Later that day, as I was on the phone talk­ing with my good friend, Clint Ritchie, who loves his ani­mals, espe­cially his 35 or so horses and sev­eral dogs, more than any human being, T.C. was on my lap. As I told Clint about Lady and the fact that T.C., who was 18 years old, was slip­ping away slowly but inevitably, he said, “Honey, some­times you just have to do the right thing for the ani­mal. Then you go behind the barn, have your­self a good cry, and get on with life.”

I knew he was right.

So I took T.C. to the vet the day after Labor Day. When the vet acknowl­edged that she was indeed dying and prob­a­bly fairly mis­er­able, I knew I had to take Clint’s advice. Walk­ing out to the car with­out her remains one of the most dif­fi­cult moments of my life and even though that was 1998, I still miss her every day and am fight­ing the tears as I write this.

You see, she was the first pet I ever had. Grow­ing up, our par­ents never allowed us to have any pets. Iron­i­cally, one of the first things my sis­ter and I did as adults was adopt one.

So T.C. remains in my heart. I’ve loved so many other pets since then, includ­ing these two spoiled lit­tle brats lovies, but T.C. will always remain, in some ways, the most spe­cial.

Throw­back Thursday

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On the Same Topic:

• Throw­back Thurs­day: Edi­tion No. 5
• Throw­back Thurs­day: Edi­tion No. 4
• Throw­back Thurs­day: Edi­tion No. 3
• Throw­back Thurs­day: Edi­tion No. 2
• Throw­back Thurs­day: Edi­tion No. 1