I did the hardest thing I have ever done today. I took my beloved 12 year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever, RocksAnne, to the vet to be put to sleep. I won’t go into all of the issues she was having that zapped away her doggie joys, but let it suffice to say that my sweet baby girl is resting peacefully with all her doggie-ness restored.
This photo above is from quite a few years ago at one of the cabins in the woods we frequent. She would hike with us, take a dip in the creeks nearby and chase critters in the woods.
A Chesapeake Bay Retriever is similar to a Labrador, but with curly thick hair. There is a saying that you train a Labrador, you negotiate with a Chessie! We have found that to be fact. When I first got RocksAnne at 4 months old, I had a chain link fence put in my backyard so she would have a safe place to play – within a week she had literally unwound the chain link and escaped. We repaired the fence and eventually “negotiated” with her to keep the peace and stay inside the fence. The next summer I put in a flower/herb garden within the chain link fence area… she liked digging in my garden, so I installed an underground electric fence around the garden and put the collar on her. The collar would give her a warning beep when she got within a certain proximity of the garden, if she proceeded to get closer, she would get a gentle shock… My smart girl took only days to figure out if she just stood there while the collar beeped, the battery would eventually run down and then she could dig up the electric fence wire without getting shocked! How do you negotiate with your four legged friend when she is secretly reading the dog version of Popular Science?
We had some awesome times – sitting in the closet waiting for the storms to pass, replacing daddy’s favorite shoes that you thought tasted so good, getting the feathers out of your mouth when you caught your first duck, sizing up every stranger the other kids brought home before giving them your approval, swimming in the pond at Maury County, staying in too many cabins to count, and just sitting together in the same room.
RocksAnne Jan 2, 1997 – Jun 8, 2009
Rest in peace my sweet, sweet girl – you served us well and were a brave girl to the last moment. We love you!