Ruby & Me - Part 3

One of my fondest memories of Ruby was when we had our last private time together. Nancy had taken Annie and Gail, our two Labrador retrievers, to another nosework trial leaving Ruby with me.

We live in the central valley of California and it can be very hot in the summer, and it was hot, over 100 degrees in the shade. Ruby and I had been doing our normal bonding on this day. I fixed her dinner and added some freeze dried salmon that she really liked. I noticed that although she was eating her dinner, it wasn’t with her usual gusto. When she finished there was still some of the freeze dried salmon left in her bowl. As she had grown older she had become more of a finicky eater, but not eating all of the freeze dried salmon, that was odd. After dinner we we sat together and watched some television. We were waiting  for the temperature to drop down so we could go for our walk. It turned out that the temperature didn’t drop very much until after midnight. So, Ruby and I went on our walk around 2 am in the morning.

Normally, Nancy would take the dogs for a walk. Ruby liked being a part of the pack. As for me, I usually state that I am a night owl, but Nancy corrects me saying that I keep vampire hours. Since I go to bed real late at night and get up late in the morning, I don’t usually walk the dogs because of the heat. When Nancy has taken the other two dogs to a nosework trial, it is a time that Ruby and I get to go out and walk.

I often called her ‘Ruby the race horse’ since you almost had to run to keep up with her.  On this walk Ruby was the race horse. I had to walk quite fast to keep up with her. We both enjoyed that walk. After we returned we went to bed, and this night Ruby did something that she hadn’t done for quite awhile. She hopped up on the bed and slept most of the night with me. This must have been hard for her since she had been having trouble with her hips for the last five or six months. 

I believe she knew that her time was almost about up. Her health was going downhill and you could tell that her hips, at times, were bothering her. She was the last of her litter, all of her brothers and sisters had already passed away. 

The two of us had come full circle – when she came home with us, she stayed up on the bed with me while I was in the CPM machine after my knee surgery and now she was back up on the bed to share some of her remaining time with me. She passed away less than two weeks later. Ruby, I will miss you. You were my buddy and my friend.