Good-Bye, Old Friend

Penny
Originally uploaded by Darrell

Our old dog Penny died today. She was a rogue. She was trouble. She lived much of her life in exile, but we loved her. She passed away on a bed on our back porch and will have a place in the yard next to her old running buddy Harry, who was her behavioral opposite. He was a good boy who preceeded her in death by five and a half years.
Harry had a tendency to wander off. Penny would lead him astray at times. She was a digger and rare was the fence that could contain her in her outlaw prime. One day she came home from one of her misadventures without her dimwitted companion. For two days, we waited for Harry to come home. When he did not appear, my wife tried a desperation move. She let Penny out and said "go find him."
Less than an hour later, the two of them trotted up the driveway together.
When her misdeeds got ber banned from the neighborhood, she went to live with my father and was a worthy companion. He loved her spirit and her energy. Fittingly, he is the one who discovered that she was gone. He knew that she had stopped eating and went to visit with some of her favorite foods in a effort to get her to just take a bite of something. Sadly, in the two hours after we left the house and before he arrived, she breathed her last.
She was a "bad dog" in many ways, but a family is grieving today. In her final weeks, she was a sweet old dog who seemed grateful for the care and attention. She died at home and I guess that's the best result we could have hoped for.

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