Tonight, for the first time in twenty years, I am not a dog owner.  Cindy, our beloved Shih Tzu, was put down this evening.  She was 15 years old.

If you are not an animal lover, you should stop reading now. I promise you will find this post sappy and emotional.  But if you have been blessed enough to share a significant portion of your life with a dog, you know exactly how our family feels tonight. If you’ve ever wept unashamedly as you watched a greatly loved companion sweetly and peacefully slip away, you know the pain we are feeling tonight.

It was time.  We all knew it beyond a shadow of a doubt.  We saw this coming over the last couple of weeks as she went downhill rapidly. She slipped away quietly and peacefully.  But none of these facts make it any easier for us to let her go.

I have always been a “dog person,” but growing up I had never had a dog for more than a couple of years.  Some ran away, some were hit by cars, some had to be given to new homes because one of the family was allergic.  After Fonda and I married, we lost two dogs, a beagle named Buffy and a Lhasa Apso named Sadie. Both were hit by cars before they turned three.  I loved my dogs, but I never seemed to be able to keep them very long. 

All that changed in April 1988 when we gave our daughter a Shih Tzu puppy for her third birthday.  We named her Sadie, after the Lhasa we lost. We have a video of that day, with Faith walking around the house and yard holding Sadie, her little legs dangling and her tail wagging. Sadie immediately became one of the family.  Shih Tzus are not known for their great intelligence or how easily they train, but they are known for an incredibly sweet personality and for being wonderful with children. 

Four years later in 1992, Sadie had a litter of seven puppies when we bred her with a friend’s male Shih Tzu.  Faith named each one of the puppies and cried when their new families came to get them.  We kept the runt of the litter, a thick little furrball that Faith named Cindy. 

For the next eleven years, Sadie and Cindy were inseparable.  Where you saw one, you saw the other.  These two dogs were a huge part of our chidren’s lives. They were Faith and Chris’ companions, confidants and playmates.  On more than one occasion we found Sadie and Cindy the unwilling but patient victims of a dress up party at the hands of Faith and her friends.

In 2003, we lost Sadie at the age of 15.  We probably waited too long to put her down, but we just could not bring ourselves to do it.  Cindy weathered the loss of her mother and constant companion well. She adapted to yet another new home when we moved to Acworth later that year.  Over the last four years, she went blind and deaf, but she still got around the house well and loved being near us wherever in the house we were.

In late August of this year, we let Cindy out in the backyard as we had thousands of times before.  That night something - we think it was a raccoon - attacked her and tore her up pretty good.  For a few days we didn’t think she would pull out of it. She did rally some, but she was never the same again.  She didn’t seem to know where she was.  She paced incessantly and was always panting.  The vet believes she might have thrown off an embolism from the animal attack, and that might have been the cause of her loss of mental function. 

Cindy was unfailingly sweet and loving to the end. She lived a very long, very full life.  If you believe the “dog years” thing, she was 105 years old.  She was pampered, there’s no doubt about it.  But she gave us far, far more than she ever received.

The Power of the Dog
Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie–
Perfect Passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone–wherever it goes–for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long–
So why in–Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?