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With heavy hearts, after witnessing a rapid and saddening deterioration, we helped Buddy (RAGOM 05-448) cross the rainbow bridge this past week.
Buddy spent his formative years with a family in Iowa, who told the shelter when they surrendered him that he had been spending 85% of his time locked in their garage. He must've found something nasty in the garage and eaten it, because he became seriously ill. Not wanting to deal with a sick dog just a couple of days before Christmas, the family surrendered Buddy to the nearest shelter. This is where the Budman's life took a turn for the better; the shelter notified RAGOM, and within just a few days, notwithstanding the holiday crush of events, RAGOM had organized a foster home and sprung poor Buddy from his incarceration at the shelter. In the meantime, my own dog, had died unexpectedly 10 days before Christmas. As I was trying to cope with my grief in the aftermath of the holidays, a friend suggested that I check out the RAGOM site. In early January, 2006 I spent more and more time going through the "Available Dogs" page on the site. I thought I should wait a few more months before seriously considering adopting a dog and going through the whole RAGOM process of application, interview, etc. But then I saw Buddy's photo and bio, and I knew he was "the one." He looked skinny and his eyes seemed sad; I immediately felt a connection, and I thought, "he's looks so sad, and I'm so sad--maybe we can make each other happy." Fortunately, by the end of the month when we'd completed the process, Buddy was still available. He was living with a wonderful foster family in central Iowa, and they were doing a GReat job of introducing him to the golden life. His foster mom described him as a bit of a goofus who had no concept of his own size, calling him a diamond in the rough. We drove to Iowa, met the Budman, fell in love, and the rest is history! Buddy, a tall 90-pounder, never realized how large he is, resembling the proverbial bull in a china shop. He had an equally voracious appetite for both food and the affection of his humans. Like many goldens, he was a velcro dog; having fallen into a really sweet situation with two doting humans, he was reluctant to let them out of his sight. He completely embraced the golden life, and lived it to the fullest for nearly 10 years, traveling with his humans, sleeping on their bed, getting a new car big enough to hold him comfortably, with his own license plates (BUDMBL), taking long daily walks with Mom, going for dips in the lake, chasing squirrels and chipmunks (and even the occasional coyote) to his heart's content, and only going inside the garage when getting in the car to go for a ride. Up until 2 years ago, Buddy and I volunteered together doing home visits with prospective RAGOM adopters (we stopped after he developed a seizure condition). Buddy impressed most interviewees with his calm demeanor and sweet personality, and amused many with his food-related antics--such as the time he wandered off during the interview and rejoined us with a grapefruit in his mouth, and similar incidents involving apples and whole loaves of bread (these episodes occurred despite my standard advance warning to "make sure anything that even remotely resembles food is put away in a safe place"). Buddy developed a lifelong respect for/fear of cats after a prospective adopter's cat jumped out from behind a sofa and landed on his head. He also impressed (?) many people with his prodigious ability to shed hair in copious amounts at any time of year. The Budman's life has come to its close, but he had quite a good run, certainly over the course of these past years. I'm sure that had you asked him, he would've told you that he had a GReat life, and it's all because of a bunch of caring and committed volunteers at RAGOM.
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