I had a blog post all planned out in my head (well, half-planned out), then I realized that I haven’t caught anyone up on my life so half of it wouldn’t make sense.

So…

Some of you may recall that we (my roommate and I) had adopted a pair of senior Boxers, Jazzy and Riley. We lost Jazzy to cancer, and, realizing that Riley had probably never been an only dog, we adopted a friend for him.

His shelter name was Turbo, and they said he was a Boxer mix, so my roommate named him Smokin’ Joe. I insisted that there was no Boxer in him, so we did his DNA. He’s 50% American Staffordshire Terrier and 50% American Bulldog. So, JoJo is all American. His nicknames (well, the ones that are repeatable in polite company) are Demon Dog, and Little Dude, which is short for “Little Dude with the Big ‘Tude.”

Then one day we were at the shelter that Jazzy and Riley came from (picking up a raffle basket I’d wone), and the shelter director said, “Did you guys see the puppies?” Only it wasn’t the puppies that she wanted us to see, and not long after that Paloma (American Bulldog mix) joined the family.

She was the sweetest dog ever. All she wanted was to love and be loved. She adored Riley, who was mostly indifferent, and JoJo adored her. (Yes, we had our own little love triangle going on here.)

Then one night Riley had either a stroke or a seizure, and didn’t come out of it, and had to be helped across the bridge. We came home, and despite the presence of two other dogs, the house felt so empty. Riley had been my shadow: where I was, he was.

JoJo became my new shadow, and Paloma declared that Sue was her human.

All was well, until Paloma’s face and head swelled up – of course on a weekend when our vet’s office was closed. We took her to the emergency vet, who thought she probably got stung inside her mouth.

She wasn’t getting any better so we took her to our vet, where she was diagnosed with MMM: Maculatory Muscle Myositis. It’s an auto-immune disease that attacks the muscles used in chewing.

There is no cure, but it can be brought into remission with enough prednisone to suppress the immune system. She was recovering well from it and the prednisone was being tapered off, but she was opened to secondary infections, and finally couldn’t fight any more and crossed the bridge one morning here at home.

So, that left us with just JoJo until an American Bulldog mix puppy showed up on the shelter’s website. He and three other three-month old puppies had been abandoned in someone’s driveway.

So he joined the household. His DNA came back mostly Boxer and American Bulldog, with a trace of Staffy. His name is Casper and he’s an unholy terror. Cute and loveable but… Puppies were so much easier to deal with when I was 45 years younger… His nickname is “Casper the Wonder Pup” because we were always wondering what he had in his mouth and where he found it. And because it’s a wonder that he hasn’t done himself in yet. He’ll be two in April. If he lives that long.

So, to bring the dog update back to something that at least touches on being writing-related, I will never forget the empty-house feeling of coming home without Riley. Or the grief when I woke up and Paloma was non-responsive. I’m not sure I can put those feelings into words in my writing, but I can pull them up at will – and sometimes they even show up when I don’t want them to.