Owning a dog? or losing a dog? Remembering Our Rosie
Oh dear! Where to begin??? Owning a dog? or losing a dog?
For all who have loved and lost a dog, you will know that we question the love and the pain involved with your furry friend!
Rosie was not my first dog, I had loved and lost a dog before so knew what I was letting myself in for when we decided to select a doggie friend to join our family.
For Mike and Christopher, this would be their first dog and little did they realise what an impact she would make on their lives and just how much they would love her1
From the beginning when she rushed over to meet us, bundling over the rest of her litter in her eagerness to get to us, Mike always insisted she had chosen us not the other way around. And, there it began, our lively, fun, cheeky, stubborn little beagle ruled the roost.
From the very start, she made herself at home, digging out the strawberry plants and dragging each one proudly across the lawn to show us. Terrorising Mike, by running around him whilst he sat on the floor trying to watch TV and having a little nip at his back as she circled him. Rosie likes things her own way, never had recall and continued to ignore anything she didn’t want to do for all of her time with us.
We have many lovely stories of Rosie and her amazing charm and lovely character and each one of us will treasure our own memories of Rosie, always.
As beagle owners will be all too aware of, a beagle will do what they want, and when they want to! but amazingly when it comes to food they will do whatever it takes to get the food from you, whether that means, performing a trick or two or just plain stealing it. The memory of Rosie which makes me chuckle the most involves just that.
Our Chinese friend Lee came to visit us one evening and as was the norm, we ordered fried rice for him from the local Chinese takeaway, not us being mean but this is what Lee preferred. Feeling that we should offer our friend a little more than this we quickly roasted a joint of ham and put the uncarved joint on the table along with the fried rice.
As Mike and I had to leave the room, Lee who was not used to dogs was left in the room with Rosie and the food for a couple of minutes. The next thing I heard was Lee shouting “Sanja, Sanja, Dog got ham” I ran into the room to find that the smell of the ham was just too much for Rosie and despite having very short legs, she managed to drag the full joint of ham off the table.
The joint of ham had split into two equal pieces and Rosie was valiently tring to eat one piece and get the other piece into her mouth before we took it away. I remember Mike saying “I’ll hold her and you get it out of her mouth” I saw the look in her eyes as she held her treasure and said “No way” she was always a gentle soul but this just wasn’t worth the risk.
Health issues panicked us over the years including her getting some sort of unidentified virus at 7 months when we thought we had lost her after several days on a drip at the vets made a full recovery. Many dogs would have hated the vets all the more for this, but not our Rosie, whenever we took her there as soon as the car door was opened she wriggled with excitement and could hardly contain herself in her eagerness to glean all of the attention she could from whichever vet she saw. The vets in turn, recognised her gentleness and always made a big fuss of this friendly, pretty little fusspot.
Rosie impacted all of our lives, Christopher, having been the youngest child did not see it coming. He absolutely adored her and a big part of his life was devoted to walking and caring for her and our other beagle, Marley who we brought into our family 18 months after getting Rosie to give her a doggie companion.
Mike always classed Rosie as his, and claimed she chose him! Having Rosie had made him love and respect animals all the more and was the tipping point in his decision to turn veggie as he could no longer look at our four-legged companions and justify eating meat.
I now remember all her naughtiness with fondness and realise that we loved her all the more for the character that she displayed. Despite all of the muddy footprints in the house as she continued to dig holes on the garden right to the end of her life. She would lift up her feet as if to say sorry mum when she saw the look and “oh Rosie, not again”, so that I could pull out the mud and grass from her paws before letting her in the house, we could not have loved her more!
Little do we know, when we get a puppy, what an impact they are going to have! Not only one our lives but in our hearts! These little creatures are totally dependent on their human owners and we have the responsibility on giving them the best life possible and making the right choices for them. What a responsibility this is!!! They give us so much love, loyalty, fun and memories that we can only try to repay in kind.
Like our family, do other families share the worries and guilt of wondering if we gave them the best life and care, and did we make the right choices for them in letting them go “over the rainbow bridge” sadly, we can only do our best and hope that we did!
We lost our Rosie aged 9, 3/4 , which we are told is not a bad age for a dog but we didn’t feel it was enough and were devasted at what we felt was her untimely passing. We would not have missed our time with Rosie, and would not change one single thing which made up our memories of this lovely little bundle of fun. Although she has left a huge hole in our lives, each one of us has our own pictures and stories in our hearts for a dear little friend, that was our Rosie.
For all who have loved and lost a dog, the question remains!
Does the pleasure outweigh the pain! Would we put ourselves through this again?
Owning a dog? or losing a dog?
In memory of our furball friend Rosie, From all that loved her: – 14/12/2023
