* " I have done the deed." (Macbeth)

2002: Trotter 7 and new pal, Dalmatian, Basil, 9, with the Jabberwock (sculpture)

2007: Trotter, 12, (84 human years) with Dalmatian,  Basil, 14 (98 human years)

2007:  Trotter (12) with new boyfriend,  Basset Hound, Nemo (5)

Good Girl,Trotter. Good, Good, Girl!

I had to put Trotter down, on Monday. She was 17 (119 by human years).

She had lost her consort, Basil, five years ago when he had to be put down at 14, and she immediately developed a limp and stopped eating.  She was twelve ( 84 human years) and I worried she would die of a broken heart.  So, two days after Basil left, I went to the Lucy MacKenzie Society with Trotter and we picked out a companion together, a Basset Hound named Nemo.  


I only adopt rescue dogs.

When Nemo arrived home with us, Trotter's limp disappeared and her appetite returned.  She started chasing Nemo around the house in hide and seek, games. She seemed rejuvenated.

Two years later when she was 14, Trotter tore her ACL chasing Nemo around the couch.  She was too old for surgery (98 by human years) so we settled on pain killers.  She paced herself and lived three more happy years.

Two weeks ago she began to fail, seeming very tired but not losing her appetite.

I waited for her to let me know and on Sunday last, she did.  While asleep, despite Nemo's barking at a strange car in the driveway, Trotter (always alert as a watchdog) unknowingly lost control of her fluids, sleeping right through the enlarging puddle, and the intruding car.

She was tired, at 119. 

Just  plain tired.

The next day I brought her to the vet and held her, kissing her forehead saying "Good girl Trotter" as the injection slowed and then stopped her heart.  

It took longer than normal the vet said, because Trotter had had a bad heart murmur for the last four years, (each of those four year the vet predicted her death but Trotter did not comply) . Trotter's  compromised  but proud heart  did not pump the death fluid through her system to her brain as quickly as it might otherwise have done.

I buried her on my property, a two-acre hillside in Vermont with a 40 mile view of New Hampshire.  She rests now with my two other Dalmatians and three cats and a canary.

Good, good girl.