It is with heavy heart that we mark today as being the one year anniversary of the loss of our dearly departed Benny Boy. It is almost impossible to believe that it has been a year. In some ways it still seems like yesterday, but in other ways it seems so long ago. It is crazy how your mind plays those tricks on you. Some of the things we miss most about not having Ben around? His constant licky face sharing. His total unconditional love. His warm heart and expressive eyes. His to die for wrinkles. His sense of humor. His sensitivity. His cuddleupness. Just the way that he made you feel like you were the only person on the face of the earth that mattered and that you were wonderful. And honestly, the house was cleaner when he was here! Now there are crumbs on the kitchen floor that linger. Spills that we have to WIPE up?! He was such a terrific boy all the way around.
Our vet recently asked me a question about my favorite photo of the boys (shown above). He asked me if that photo is photoshopped. He was shocked that the photo is a true and accurate depiction of real life. That was Benny! Benny living like a wild man! Flying off a child's sliding board to hopefully spark his brother Henry to chase him. (When in reality, Henry just pummeled Benny at the end of that scene and then they both rolled and tumbled and ran like crazy men around the playground. Luna stood wide eyed on the sideline trying to see how she could partake in the lunacy. Benny just wanted Henry to play play play. All the time. "C'mon Henry! Just play with me!" Benny would coax (if he could actually talk that is what he would say).
So, it's been a year without that lively spirit and heartwarming love....
Benny was all wrinkles, all the time. He knew how to work those wrinkles to get anything his little heart desired.
All Benny wanted was to be loved by Cupid. He never understood why taking over her makeshift cat bed or eating her toys never brought them closer together.
On guard! Benny was the watch dog. He was always keeping an eye on things. Had anyone ever breached the permitter he never would have done anything about it except offer them a warm greeting, but he was always alert.
Forever the Pillow King!
Benny hanging out with Lou C.
Never too far from puffy.
And of course you can never forget his love of pumpkin bread (or food in general).
We have a "flex" room that is just off the entry way to our house. This room has multiple uses. It is a relax room and has recliners for extra relaxing. It also has an open floor where we can do a light in home work out (no real equipment or anything, just floor exercises/exercise with a video type of thing). This room also has a love seat. This love seat would be the popular pug place to sleep while the OBP peeps worked out or tended to types of quiet work or play (reading, laptop work, etc). This room has not been used much lately and when it is used Henry has not really wanted to be in there. Recently, however, I was doing an at home workout and Henry came and looked up to the loveseat as if asking to be picked up and placed there. I happily obliged. This is great sign to us, actually. That he knows where in the house he is, that he wants to be "up" on something that he could potentially fall off of, that he wants to settle near us even when we are not right beside him are all signs of great progress for the blind old boy.
So, there is Henry. Resting on a love seat that we thought he'd probably not enjoy anymore in life. Henry is bouncing back in so many ways. Slow and steady was always his motto and it still hasn't changed. #HenryStrong
In case you have been wondering.....Henry's corneal scratch (or should we say "chunk"?) is healing. It has indeed been a slow process. A process which has required several more trips back to the vet for follow up. (We had to be sure it was indeed healing and that is not something we can spy with our own naked eye.) The good news is, so far, we have not needed to venture beyond our own general vet. If we had to make these frequent trips to our eye specialist it would have been bad news. (Seriously, who can take 4 hours a day off every other day for 2 weeks without suffering some recourse at work?) So, we have been lucky that Henry is healing his Henry way: slow & steady. The way he does everything. But it has worked for him this long. So, why change now?
Henry will keep healing and we will keep dosing him and hopefully it will all be fine again soon. (I doubt night trips with his head out the car window are vet approved or good for his healing.) But they are more good for his mental health and that is what we need even more than a quick healing eye these days. So, we gotta take what we can get and sometimes that means making trade offs.
Having Henry as an only dog now should, in theory, mean that things are easier. Right? One dog vs. 3 or 4 dogs should mean that things are easier. This is sometimes true and sometimes not true. Where it is the most true, though, is at the beach. Taking Henry to the beach vs. taking 3 or 4 dogs to the beach is considerably easier. This is one of the reasons we now are able to visit the beach so often. The fact that Henry has always been the most fond of the beach does not hurt his case for wanting us to take him, either.
What made this trip to the beach especially nice, though, was there was Luna high in the sky. Not quite a full moon but just shy of being full. And there was Henry, being "followed" by her sister like old times. At this particular time, both the sun (Solsey) and the moon (Looney) were shining brightly, as well. Sadly we don't have any specific celestial being to represent Benny boy in this scenario but he, of course, is ever present in our heart the way the rest of them are. Right now Benny is inked on us, too. (Soon Luna will be, as well but I have been struggling with exactly how I want the artwork to look.) So, for now, we rely on our ink for Solsey and Benny but have to rely on the moon in the sky for our Looney.)
It was a beautiful night, though to have Henry and Luna together on the beach.
Last week, we took Henry on our nightly walk. (Every weekday starts with a drive to City Center and a short walk and every night ends with a drive to one of our many parks for another walk---but never the same park 2x in a row.) Anyway, since this was a "weekend day" (technically it was Memorial Day but it was a non work day) we did not begin the day with a trip to City Center but we did end the day there. City Center is a park that has many different paths and the paths are generally wide and Henry tends to navigate them very well. Well, the fact that he is getting more confident means we can be a little more relaxed with his abilities. However, it was our recent relaxing from over protection to just moderate protection that brought us to where we are now. Henry plowed into a tree. Now he has a significant abrasion to his cornea. Since he is blind he obviously runs into stuff (and it is our duty to try to prevent this and on this occasion we did not do such a hot job). We usually do an adequate job of helping him avoid crashing and bumping, though and he has been doing a good job on his own of navigating and approaching with caution.
Well, on this day, the OBP peeps simultaneously spied a beautiful young fluffy black chow mix pup. He had the breed classic black tongue and was simply gorgeous. Of course, at that very moment, boom! Smack into a tree went Henry. (Was it Kamikaze style because we were admiring the youth and health of another?! Yikes!) In any event, immediately after he was unable to open his eye and appeared disoriented. We worked with him to walk off what could be walked off and then texted our vet in the mean time to see what could be done about the eye until we could get him to be seen (first thing the next day).
Cut to the following day, after the vet and finally home: Henry is on 5 different meds for his eye (and it is really not good and will be slow healing---not like when Benjamin and Luna have had this same thing when they each had a little scratch at one point or another--this time, with Henry, there is like a little chunk of eye missing). So, we are doing our best to nurse it back to health and he seems a bit more comfortable except when we are actively nursing it (i.e. applying meds).
We had to go back to the vet 48 hours later to see if was healing and did show some minor improvement be we knew it would be slow to heal. We have to go back again early next week and if he is not improving as we need, then we will take Henry to the big dogs an hour away (the eye specialist---where we are debating if we should have gone there first---but the first day from a holiday weekend....we were not sure if they would have been able to squeeze him in, etc). So, we will see what next week holds. In the mean time, he doesn't seem in much discomfort (until we dose him) and he's only a little more clumsy in his navigation, so we are just trying to hang on to hope that this does not turn out bigger than it is already. We will keep you posted but Henry is kind of straddling the side line for now.
We've posted photos and videos of Henry loving car rides. Well, these photos were taken from a slightly more risky angle. The iphone was outside the car window, while the car was moving! We have been trying to capture how the wind lifts Henry's jowls up and gives him a particularly silly (and actually gruesome) face! We have not yet been able to capture this on camera, but we will keep trying.
And for those of you with a very keen eye to detail, yes, the car is red. It was a loaner while the white Subaru Outback was in the shop for some tweaking to some sensors. And if you did catch the color change on the automobile, go you! If you did not notice, do not feel bad. Henry looks good no matter which color car he is framed in.
