We lost our wonderful Chihuahua Socks today.  His health had been on the decline for the past few months, so this wasn’t totally unexpected.  He had recently starting refusing to eat, so we (meaning Sandy) changed up his diet and tried several different foods and combinations.  Some things worked, for awhile, others didn’t, and he often went without eating. Other times, when he did eat, he would have difficulty keeping it down, so we had quite a few messes to clean up.  As a result, he lost a lot of weight and got weaker.

We noticed his vision and hearing also got much worse over the past few months, so we knew it was only a matter of time.  We wondered if we would know exactly when would be the right time to have put him down, and worried about him suffering too much before we did.  But in the end, he spared us that painful decision and passed away peacefully this morning on his own.

The day before yesterday he had started continuously panting and slowly looking around as if he was having much more difficulty seeing things than he had before.  We comforted him, but he would keep getting up, walking a little, then just stand there panting and looking around. He got even more restless last night, and didn’t sleep at all.  I stayed up with him, sitting in my recliner most of the night, and he came and sat with me as he always used to, but last night he never stayed there for very long, then he’d jump down, just panting and slowly looking around.  He would walk around a bit, looking around again, then he would come back up and sit with me again. He repeated this several times, and I felt so bad there was nothing more I could do for him other than pet and scratch him when he needed it.  He never complained, the little trooper. He didn’t have any noticeable pain anywhere, no sensitive areas at all, so we’re sure everything just took its natural course and he died on his own terms.

Last week, during our first big snow storm of the season (the one before yesterday’s big storm) I let him out in the backyard after having plowed a large oval-shaped path through the backyard for him to run.  I figured he might not use it, since he usually doesn’t go far from the door these days when relieving himself, but he made a liar out of me and walked all the way to the farthest point of the oval before squatting to do his business.  I was hiding inside, as usual (if he saw me, I knew he’d come running back) but watching him closely. When he finished, he started the walk back to the house, but must have caught a chill or saw an indent in the snow at some point and he tried to take a shortcut!  He began plowing through the snow in the middle, beelining it toward the door! He made it halfway, slowed to a stop and then was stuck. He just didn’t have the strength to go on, and just stood there. I threw on my shoes quickly and ran out into the foot-high snow and scooped him up.  I ran him back inside and he was pretty excited (or relieved) once he shook off all the snow, and that little bit of drama didn’t seem to affect him at all.

I’ve accumulated many little stories like that one over the past sixteen years.  I only wish I had documented more of them to share with others. Fortunately, I have documented his life pretty well in the hundreds of photos I’ve taken of him over the years, so I’m going to assemble his final photo album as soon as I get a chance.  In the meantime, if you’d like to read a few of the “Socks” posts from my website, click here.  Be sure to go all the way back to the very first post, titled “Lost Peanut”, which explains how we ended up getting socks in the first place.