Boscoe Campbell

My Dearest Boscoe

by Sandra Campbell

2-25-07

I guess I just did not realize that Zack, Mindy and Boscoe's diseases/deaths and all their special needs came on the heels of one another on top of a couple of 5 day old orphaned squirrels mixed in there and then Rusty, Susie and Kali and their sad lil orphan stories came to live with me so with hardly a breather between all of this I did not have to decide what I might want to do each day/night/weekend. Their wants and needs dictated just about every plan I made which may also explain now why I find myself so lost.

I only had you the last 3 1/2 of your approximately 10 years on this earth so I was not there when you drew your firstbreath but I was there this past Monday, Feb. 19th at 6:30 A.M. when you drew your last. Being a Christian you'd think I would have known better then to let my heart be so tightly tethered to anything or anyone on this earth. Until this past Monday I was sure I had not. I am in such awe at the degree of grief, guilt, pain, loss & loneliness I feel even amidst your four other adopted four footed fur siblings who also seem to be in the same state of being as lost as Mommy.

I had NO idea that when I found out 3 months ago which seems like only yesterday that the innocent lil cough you had developed was actually a nasty thing called "heart disease" and that you'd be going so quickly. I know now why my mind lead me to believe that you'd always be around because my mind knew I would not be able to grasp the fact that your not. My mind won't let me believe that your not somewhere in this house waiting for your 12 hour or 8 hour meds. Or your tube feeding inter mingled with your regular feeding of the only thing in this entire town that Mommy finally found that you could/would eat. What am I suppose to do with myself if I am not looking up everything there is to know about heart disease or sitting at the library till closing finding out they have absolutely nothing on canine heart disease? Or coming home at lunch to give you your 8 hr meds or watching you breath and comparing it to the other's breathing? Or wrapping you in your favorite blankey and cuddling you up in my lap with my hand on your chest counting heartbeats and watching your fast breathing ease off with your full body massage? I could always get you to draw a deep breath when I scratched that one little spot behind your ears. Whose teeth will I brush? Your the only one that ever let me and loved it!!

My mind can't comprehend that the sound of the doggie door is not you coming in or going out. Or that 5th doggie treat I find myself holding has no one to take it. Or that your not sitting here next to my chair nudging me to rub those big Basset ears and that big, fat, sweet Basset head while I type with one hand. Or that there is no one to break up the out of hand horse play by Susie, Kali and Rusty like you always did for me. Or that you will never lay there next to me wiping off my kisses from your sweet, fat, Basset face with that sweet, fat, Basset paw just so I would keep giving you more. Or that I will never have to duck out of the way of those sweet, fat Basset slobbers that only you could launch that far. Or that I will never hear you slurping up the water from the toilet the way you did because you refused to drink out of a bowl. Or that I will never see that one and only sweet, fat, Basset head and face coming up the path in the back yard or in the window when I leave and come home, Or that I will never see or hear you throw yourself to the floor on your favorite rug and make those oh-so-content noises as you rub your back to and fro. I could go on and on with the things I will miss about you but time and space doesn't allow it.

In my time and haste to get and keep you living I did not think to prepare myself that you might not. I was not using the time we had left to accept and brace myself for the day that your last hurting breath would mean the beginning of mine or that your dieing from a broken heart would leave me living with one. My denial that you would not be around forever and my pleading with you to "keep breathing" did not allow you to go in peace and with dignity and did not allow me the sense to know I should have stayed up with you on your last night on this earth. Instead I assumed your hard breathing would fix itself as I slept and as soon as the pills I poked down your throat took affect. Instead I awoke to find you at my bedside and that not only had it not fixed itself but was 10 times worse and for that I am sooooooooooooo very sorry!!

If I could have known that your passing was going to leave such a dark, cold lonely void I wouldhave done things differently. One of the two most wonderful vets I will ever know and love and whom was your very first Mommy saved your life three times. Once 3 1/2 years ago when the Animal Shelter found you wondering the streets and brought you in to Golden's to be euthanized due to your mange ravaged hairless and emancipated body. Then she saved you again 3 months ago when I took you in with congestive heart failure and again on New Years when your lil heart went into defib.

Dr. Simmons, (aka: my dear friend Holli), along with the super terrific, Dr. Golden, and all the genuinely loving and caring staff at Golden's Animal Hospital has always and again these past few months went way beyond the call of duty. I will never be able to thank them enough for everything they did including letting you come and hang out there while I was at work all those days and while they were trying to get you stable, your meds regulated and your appetite back. They literally allowed you to lay anywhere you pleased and even brought you food from home and fast food at lunch. What love your Mama Simmons had for you that just to try and get you to eat she brought you a egg and ham sandwich from home. One day I heard she got you to eat a little bite of your beef jerky by acting like she was eating it!! I will never forget the day I went by after work to pick you up and there you were laying flat out horizontally in the floor sound asleep snoring with Dr. Golden straddle over you just so he could get to the computer. That was when I heard they had nicknamed you "speed bump". One day when I went to get you and some one had brought you back chicken nuggets at lunch hoping to get you to eat something. There next to your blankey on the floor was the container of nuggets but not only that! They had also set the little container of sauce I guess in case you preferred yours dipped. I just pictured you doing that! What a grin that brought to my face then and now.

I pray that when this unbelievable nauseating loneliness and emptiness wears off and when it doesn't hurt to breath that the enormous amount of "happy" times with "our boy Boscoe" that Holli and I shared will come flooding back including the most memorable day that you and I presented to "Mama Simmons" (as we call her) the plaque we made for her in honor and in thanks for saving this once-in-a-life-time special baby and allowing me the joy and pleasure of taking over as Mommy to him when her situation with kids and dogs were not allowing it and whom is also grieving the loss of "our boy" as well.

So I say to you, My dear sweet Boscoe and "little clown", I love you now and always. Thanks for all the laughs &memories.

Love, Mommy, Bucky, Rusty, Kali, Susie and ....

P.S. Boscoe, I know that there will never ever be any way of replacing you short of cloning you so I hope you don't mind that I adopted a very special orphan from BHRA today named Homer whose first Mommy is dieing of cancer and that way down deep sort of looks a little tiny bit like you and way down deep sort of sometimes acts like you. Sort of like an orphan adopting another orphan. bye bye my little love. XOXO

2-26-07

P.P.S. It is now the next day and exactly one week since you left this world and mine fell apart. Today was the first time since you left that a remembrance from the past of something you did brought a smile to my face instead of tears to my eyes. I am so glad I had not submitted this yet as I made some notes today of some things I would just love to tell you and ask you if given just one more chance. Here they are in no random order but in the order in which they came to mind all day as I sat my desk at work:

Do you know how very special you were to so many people?

Andy, next door, really has missed you. He said he had just finally started to be able to tell you and Susie apart.

Ric & Allen across the street miss you and sent the sweetest sympathy cyber card. They were always able to coax you off your secure spot on the porch when I never could.

The Hicks, that brought us that statue on the porch that looked just like you also sent the sweetest card.I have not had the heart to tell the mail lady so I just keep dodging her as I have that lady in the wheel chair from the next street that comes by here all the time. I saw her through the blinds come by yesterday with treats for you and your brother and sisters but I just couldn't face her yet so I stayed hidden inside. HOW WILL I EVER TELL HER WITHOUT BREAKING DOWN??! Maybe I'll get Andy to do it.

Did those massages really help your breathing as much as you acted like they did? I'm glad.

No one could cuddle or snore like you did.

Your Mama Simmons and I decided to do the cremation thing. I hope you don't mind. I'm hoping that we will share your ashes. I would have loved to have you done that new way where they freeze dry your pet and it looks so real then those beautiful markings and that sweet face would have been with me forever. I loved the markings on your left side where it looked just like you were wearing shorts and a vest.

I really did not care that you started pee-peeing in the house again. I know it was the diuretics. You were never in trouble for that!! I wished you hadn't acted like you were. You were a GOOD boy!!

Who is going to sing with Bucky now?

Will I ever find that 1st furry vacuum attachment you fell in love with and hid somewhere with your favorite toy two years ago?

Did you try to wake me up at all that last night? Were you ever able to lay down and sleep at all that night? Were you in pain? I'M SORRY I WENT TO SLEEP!!

I'm sorry for that horribly frantic and bumpy last car ride!!

If I had refused to carry you out to potty in the rain would you have eventually gone out on your own?

When I found you laying in the back yard that last Friday at lunch having a breathing spell was it because you were feeling so good you wore yourself out playing with Rusty, Kali and Susie? I hope so. How long had you been laying there?

I REALLY WAS NOT MAD AT YOU THE NIGHT BEFORE YOU DIED I WAS MAD AT THAT SORRY DISEASE AND THAT NOTHING I WAS DOING WAS HELPING!! You were a GOOD boy!

I gave Homer your blankey and froggie. He is taking real good care of it. Did I tell you what he did the minute I leaned down to pet him? As you always did he immediately rolled over on his back!! Then he got up and literally dragged me over to my car as if to say, "lets go Mommy".

I still can't throw away that nasty sugar free ice cream that helped get all those pills down your throat. I can't wipe your slobber off the back seat yet either. I'm sorry I couldn't drive and hold your head up so you could breath!!

I found your first place thing for winning the biggest paws contest at the Bash in 2003. I WAS SO PROUD!! I think the guy there stretched your paw as hard as he could so you'd win after hearing your rescue from death story. Even then you wrapped people around that sweet fat paw of yours.

Why were you so afraid of the water bowl? Why were you so afraid to go outside? Why were you afraid to go in the kitchen?

I have decided since I am not burying your ashes to bury a time capsule in your honor. Some of the items will be your first place biggest paw thing, the teeth you lost at your last dental, your collar, your toothbrush, the sympathy cards, those two sets of $50 dollar Mary Kay brushes that I kept forgetting to put up out of your reach and you chewed to pieces and that I found strewn all over the back yard. You really did have a thing for brushes didn't you baby. Also that crazy picture of you with your mouth wide open that I entered in the photo contest and even though it didn't win anything I still think it won hands (paws) down for content. All that will be put into your Christmas stocking and buried along with this tribute to you.

I sat out on the porch last night and you weren't there sitting next to me and pressing yourself as hard as you could into my side until I would just have to put my arm around you and hold you tight. If I loosened my hold around you I could always feel you press yourself on me again until I tightened the hug.

Susie is showing Homer how to use your rug for back rubs but no one will ever be able to throw themselves down on it like you did. I'm surprised you never got whiplash!

I think Bucky really misses you shoving your face into his to coax him into those wonderful all over tongue facials he'd give you.

WE MISS YOU HORRIBLY! We can't set the table without our centerpiece. We can't have a circus without our clown. Bucky misses your help keeping Susie, Rusty and Kali in line. I've never seen his eyes so blood shot.

I'm donating all your heart meds to Golden's in case someone has a baby with that nasty heart stuff and can't afford them. Not the herbs though. I should not have believed those people online and at the herb store that told me they could actually reverse your heart disease. I will take them up there as soon as I think I can do that without fallen apart the way I did the other day. They were so wonderful and I wish I had tried harder to keep my composure and to be stronger for your Mama Simmons who also misses you terribly.

Lastly my sweet funny faced lil boy, even with all the hurt from your passing it was worth the 3 1/2 yrs of total joy and laughter you brought into my life and this house. I thank our awesome God above for choosing me of all people to bless with such spirited baby and as your Mama Simmons put it a "perfect soul". I am also so blessed to have such a wonderful friend as your Mama Simmons has been to me. I wish I had appreciated your specialness more and how your very special spirit filled up every corner of this house and how you touched the lives of so many others starting with your very special Mama Simmons. She chose the perfect name for you after she saved your life cause not only were you a good boy you really were "THE BOSS". xoxoxoxo