The pretty pretty princess is dead. Long live the pretty pretty princess.
In the fall of 2008, when we had just settled into our house in a tiny town in New Mexico, my mother rescued a young black lab from a rural road in Tulsa. We had been looking for a companion for our dear little red-headed dog Speed Bump, so I drove out to retrieve her and bring her home. I was a little nervous, as I wasn't that skilled of a dog parent at that point. I was worried--what if she turned out to be aggressive, and I didn't find out until we were on the interstate? She was anything but. She was the sweetest, most earnest girl from the very beginning. And boy, could that dog eat. In the car, I gave her a big chewy bone that was labeled as an emergency meal replacement. Before we had traveled a mile, it was gone.
Her name had meaning. She was chosen to be Bump's mate (not in a breeding sense), so I called her the Bride of Frankenstein. I looked up the name of the actress who played the bride in the original movie, and it was Elsa Lanchester. I knew immediately that was my girl's name.
It took her a good three years to fully settle into herself. She was an enthusiastic chewer, even when she was chewing things she wasn't supposed to have. She ate everything, but she was happiest when the apple tree in our yard was dropping fruit for her enjoyment. Once we moved here to Colorado, she discovered the freedom of roaming the mountain, and that was the happiest time of her life.
Her pancreas started to fail a few years ago, mere months after Bump died of pancreatic cancer. We kept her going with pancreatic enzymes in her food, and it put weight back on her for a while. Within the last two years, her hearing failed, her eyes got cloudy, and she started forgetting where she was and would wander out of the yard. We knew this was coming.
She got a violent intestinal infection last week. She went to our regular vet two days in a row, and I knew then that this was the end. The Mr couldn't give up on her, though. He was very attached to her, and he took the option to give her intensive care at the emergency vet for days (all totaled $6k.) He even talked about a feeding tube for her. I said no. At some point we had to accept that we were prolonging her pain, and we couldn't do that. He was going to bring her home tonight, on his way from a day trip to the mountain. He got a call when he was heading down that she had taken the decision out of our hands. Her intestines abcessed and she died. The kids came over to give her a proper burial.
Good old Elsa. She never stopped trying to show us how much she wanted to be part of our family.
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