Bobik 13/01/2008 - 04/09/2014

Bobik

Bobik died accidentally a few days before I got home. He tried to jump and climb over the side fence in the dog's yard, fell back, caught his collar and broke his neck.  Andrei buried him under a tree in the abandoned yard next door.

Even Bobik couldn't climb over that

Bobik was too smart for his own good.  Once he learned how to climb over the front gate there was no keeping him inside until I rigged a meter-high mesh on top of it two years ago.  That held him but didn't look too fancy.  We replaced the front gate this summer.

We always figured he could climb the side fence if he took a notion but he never did as all activity was in the front.  Until this fall when a stray female came along outside the side fence.  Over Bobik went.  It was one or two nights later when he tried it again that he didn't quite make it.

New front gate and side fence

He'd had the best summer of his life.  Tanya's niece, Sveta, who looked after our place while we were away, loved to walk and took the dogs on two and three hour walks every day.  In hot weather she took them to the river to swim.

Volk, of course, is heart broken.  He stopped eating and just lay there.  Tanya bought him liver sausage and cooked porridge for him and he ate a little of that.  Yesterday I went to see him and he wagged his tail a little but didn't move otherwise.  I picked him up and sat and held him.  He just lay there limply in my arms.  I set him down and he lay against my leg and went to sleep.

Last night I could hear him crying for about five minutes.  Short howls full of sadness and loneliness. I cried for Volk.  The two of them were never apart unless one escaped and the other didn't.  I had to smile when I was holding Volk as I noticed a huge partially healed gash on his front leg from the last time they tried to kill each other.  Brothers!

Today when I picked up his leash to take him for a walk he actually bounced a little and wagged his tail happily.  We went for a good 45 minute walk (all I could handle) and he walked beside me quite well behaved.  He will make it.

Tanya is talking about getting a 6 mo old spayed female to keep him company but we'll see how he does.

Tanya didn't tell me until I got home as she didn't want to spoil the last few days of my time in Canada.  She did right, I suppose.  But it reminded me of the Ronnie Corbett monologue describing how on holidays he got a letter from his friend to tell him his cat died.  He was devastated and wrote his friend chewing him out for not breaking the news to him gently.   "You could have written that my cat was up on the roof.  Then the next day write and tell me it had fallen off the roof. The third day write and tell me it was injured and the fourth day tell me it had died.  That way I would have time to get used to the idea".  The next year he was on holidays and got a letter from his friend that started "Your mother was up on the roof".

Bobik my good dog, Volk and I will miss you. As Mark Twain said, if you didn't go to heaven, I want to go where you went.