Henry standing with Boudy

Alert readers will notice that I haven't posted for a while.

I lost Baxter, my terrier mix, known as the emergency back-up dog on April 12th. I've been really torn up about it and unable to post. I knew I wanted/needed to tell folks, but was too upset to do it.

Baxter was an amazing dog. We called him the Doctor Dog. He would always look deeply in people's faces and sniff them deeply. We figured out that if he put his paw on your chest, you were getting sick. My friend A was badly hurt in a traffic accident and was here one weekend and Baxter was very attentive to her wanting to stay next to her all the time. He was always very upset with C who smoked, he'd smack his paw repeatedly on his chest.

There's a picture of him somewhere back in the blog during winter in his natty fleece coat. He loved his comforts. We have a space heater that we sit in front of during the winter so we don't have to heat the whole house. Baxter would always wish to be right in front of it soaking up ever single therm that the heater pumped out. We didn't often let him, so he would creep under our legs and lay there occasionally sighing his disgruntlement. He was such a pasha. He loved big soft pillows and piles of bedding.

He also loved to eat rocks and sticks and what ever else he could. We used to find him chewing on the fine grade sand paper we used to use when we did the woodworking in the basement. We've had to have him "pumped" out a couple of times when something got him stoved up.

This time was once too many. The short story is that on Friday he wouldn't eat all his dinner. That had never happened. I spent all night with him as I could tell he was uncomfortable. In the morning I found where he had thrown up what dinner he did eat. Our wonderful vet decided that he was most likely obstructed in the upper intestine and that she needed to operate as things were not moving.

She operated on him and he came through just fine. I was looking forward to taking care of him as he healed and making fun of his naked puppy belly. But in the morning, our vet called and said that he had some seizures in the night and had died.

We buried him right next to Emma in the garden, back to back. As we got him to be Emma's companion and friend, it does comfort me to know they are back together again playing the chew on each other's face game.

More with another picture.