Living Large In Our Little House

Emma

I'm tak­ing the day off from post­ing, as I am dev­as­tated over los­ing one of the finest dogs I've ever known.

Emma went miss­ing some­time early Thursday morn­ing, hav­ing gone out to roam with Sade and Chloe before the hot sun came back out.

Emma hates the heat and there was a 100+ heat index yes­ter­day. I knew some­thing was wrong as soon as the sun appeared and Emma did not. We've searched by boat on the shore and tromped through the woods and have only turned up a lot of chig­ger and mos­quito bites.

In our search, we dis­cov­ered that my aunt's elderly dog col­lapsed on Sunday and they had to help him make his tran­si­tion to the next life later that day. Another neighbor's — more than 2 miles away — elderly dog dis­ap­peared two days ago, the sec­ond time he has tried to wan­der off to pass from this life (the first time this spring, he was found and nursed back).

It's been a long, hot and hard sum­mer. Emma rarely wanted out until after the sun went down. Last week­end, our friend Mike, pointed out how hard it was  for Emma to get around. It was true, at 11, she moved slower and her coat was no longer the shiny, healthy coat as evi­denced in this pic­ture taken nearly three years ago dur­ing our first full win­ter here. We were advised by our vet just on Tuesday to have two sus­pi­cious lumps removed from Emma's chest and leg.

I wrote on my K9 Cuisine blog how Emma once saved my life. I only wish I could have kept her with me forever.

Emma was my mother's favorite "Granddog" and if she is gone from our lives, she is now back with her Grammy, giv­ing her a lot of nudges and in return, she is get­ting a lot of pets.