Thursday, September 11, 2014

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.

14 comments:

  1. Oh, I am so sorry Allen. And Tanya. And Volk, too. *hug*

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    1. Thanks, Violet. Will pass the hugs along to Tanya and Volk.

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  2. I'm sorry for your loss. It's always so hard to lose a member of the fur family, and it makes it even harder when you have to watch their companions mourn. Sending my sympathy to all.

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    1. Thanks, Diane. You are right. The hardest part of any death is those left behind. We are giving Volk lots of love as best we can.

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  3. Oh, I'm so sorry Allen. I'm guessing that the "Live life as if the gate were left open" picture was inspired by Bobik. So sorry.

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    1. Thanks, Wynn Anne. I never did get a video of the two dogs leaving the yard when I would open the gate for them. Honestly, they did look like the dog in the picture. But Bobik would always come back to make sure I was coming with them

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    2. It is hard losing a pet - it seems to have happened to a number of people this year. Our cat of eighteen years.... Our best wishes with you all
      the Ol'Buzzard

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  4. Oh, papa. That is heartbreaking. Bobik was such a good, bad dog. I loved him so. And poor, lonely Volk. So sad. I'm glad you took him for a long walk. He will need them.

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    1. I will walk him every day. He needs company now that he is alone

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  5. Oh Dad, I'm so sorry. This is heartbreaking. I know how much you loved him.

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  6. It's tough to lose a good dog.

    "These days I could spend a fortune on subscriptions just to keep up with articles on Russia/Ukraine. I run out of freebies pretty quick on many sites."

    Don't know if it will work for you but at a news site I visit a lot as soon as the page builds I hit the esc key to stop the action so the screen won't darken.

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    1. Thanks, all.
      BBC, most of the stuff I want to read is more than one page so there is lots of time for the cookie to count.

      Delete

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