I miss my friend

I'm sure most of you know I had a border collie named Bo. I got him about a year and a half ago when he was 8 weeks old. I was planning on moving into my house and thought I needed a buddy to keep me company, so Bo was going to be my guy. I remember the first night I brought him home and took him to bed he cried the whole night. You see, I was trying to do things right and train him in a kennel. Well, he didn't like sleeping there in that cage while I was in the nice warm bed. Finally about 3 a.m. after getting no sleep due to his yelping, I decided to put him in bed with me. From there on out he was my bed buddy…well until he realized Grandma and Grandpa's bed was more fun since that's where his buddy Jake slept, but that's a whole other story…Bo was my bud and I enjoyed watching him grow, especially when he grew out of his using the carpet as his outdoor grass potty.

Last April, when he was just a year old, Bo started to have seizures. I was told it was probably due to epilepsy and that some dogs react differently to them. Some dogs can go years without another seizure while others are put on medicine to control them. My family and I decided not to put him on medication yet, and to just wait until he possibly had another. Well he did have another about a month later. This time while we were in Colorado. We tried medication then, but he had a bad opposite reaction to it. However, there was a second kind of medicine that we could try with him. We decided to do that, and at a year old my baby was on medication that would be with him all his life. The problem with this medicine, however, is it has to be regulated. A perfect dose has to be found that will be a balance between a dopy dog and controlling the seizures. He had another episode of seizures about a month later, and his dosage was upped. We thought he was doing well. It had been two months since his last episode, so we were praying we had found the right dosage.

Last Wednesday, he started to have his seizures about 4 a.m. This time they were really bad and he had a hard time coming out of them. He had 3 more that day and never seemed to recover. My parents decided it would be best to take him to the ER vet. He had a history of his lungs filling with fluid after his seizures, and with the severity of the ones he had that day they thought it would be best to check it out. The Vet who checked him out didn't think there was a problem, but they kept him there for observation and it's a good thing they did. After taking x-rays, they saw Bo's lungs had completely filled with fluid. They put him on oxygen in hopes to help him breathe. He seemed to be faring okay, but about 10 a.m. Thursday morning he took a turn for the worse. He turned purple and almost quit breathing. They revived him and invited us to come in to see him. The poor guy was suffering and there was nothing that could be done to clear his lungs and he had to be put to sleep. It's so sad to me to think he was so young, and so sick.

The days without him are hard. It's really quiet in the house now without his bark. He's not bounding down the stairs when I come home at night to greet me. I miss him laying by the shower while I got ready in the morning. It's hard not to see him out in the back yard chasing a Frisbee or picking cucumbers for us from the garden. There are daily reminders of him that are still hard to see: the picture of him in my room and on my phone, the purple ink on the carpet from where he chewed a pen, his golf balls that he used to play with for hours, and just this morning I picked up my math book for the first time since this all happened and saw how neatly he had chewed the corners for me. I think he was trying to get rid of the book knowing how much I dislike the class. As much as I want to shake my finger at him for doing it, I just have to giggle. I miss my friend!!