35+ years of animals.

We said goodbye to Grace today.
It had to be done. 
She was losing blood from her liver.
I'm having such a bad time that I tried to dig up some old pics of not all of our animal friends who have passed on, as a distraction.

First Moggy, our cat who learnt to roll over on command. My husband taught him to do it and showed a store manager how to train his own cats. 
Apparently, this same man traveled the world for work and taught all the warehouse cats to roll over.
Then came Puffo, a scruffy stray who somehow convinced the kids that he was our dog. I used to crop his long  fur in the summer, a little at a time, because he wouldn't keep still. He did look pretty frightening between trims.
Next came Ruby, who was the most obedient and seriously minded dog ever. She was ocd about a tennis ball. 
One winter afternoon, on the beach, a couple went to great lengths to teach her to retrieve the ball, which she refused to do. 
Instead she would dump it in the sea, fish it out and leave it on the shore. The man picked  it up and the whole procedure was repeated again and again and again.
Later, the couple told us that they had failed to teach her to fetch the ball, We replied that she, Ruby, had failed to teach them to throw the ball in the water, not on the beach.

Bonnie was with us for a short time. We rescued her from a roadside when she was about to give birth. She died a few months later.

Ruby had a litter of pupppies with a not very wonderful G.S. 
As soon as they began to crawl out of the den, she tried to teach them how to play with the ball. The expression on her face was of profound disappointment to have such dumb puppies. 

We kept one and named him Grizzly beacause he was so huge. Ruby, his mother, taught him everthiing he had to know. 
Her method involved his head spending a lot of time in her mouth, but she didn't actually hurt him.
He grew up to be a beautiful, gentle animal but with defective dental alignment so we decided to vasectomise him so that he wouldn't have puppies with new entry, Brooke. 

According to our vet, who I trust and believe, there is a one in a million chance that a vasectomy doesn't work properly, despite doing it correctly.  Anyway, Brooke, had 13 gorgeous puppies nine of whom survived and Grizzly became famous.

Next came Baldrick, who is currently 13yrs old and a bit and the only one still alive.

In the mean time, a couple of years after Baldrick's arrival, came Grace.
Grace, my beautiful girl who died today.