Whoever Said Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend.. Never Owned A Dog.

Featuring Toby J

A few days ago I was told that my best friend's health was in bad shape and that I wouldn't have as much time with him as I thought I would have. While some of you may not consider a pet to be a best friend or someone to spend a great deal of time getting emotional over, I am not one of those people. For those of you that are not animal lovers, you might as well stop reading now because this post you will not begin to understand, for this is for the animal lovers out there who can relate to what I am going through. My dog is a not only a big part of my life, he is family. Unlike the normal topics that you may normally read in this blog, this week has been extremely difficult and I feel the need to express my love for my best friend, my Australian Shepherd, Toby.

Toby's favorite spot in the house; Sitting at the top of the steps

Nine years ago, after I had lost my childhood best friend, Shadow - another Australian Shepherd that made a major impact on my life, I said never again. I can not feel that love for any other dog like I did for Shadow or wanted to experience the pain that I felt when I held him in my arms and watched him go into that big dog park in the sky. Shadow had suffered from a condition that was common in his breed and the vet had given him only six months to live. After watching him suffer with medication that made him tired all the time, lose his appetite and become the ghost of the dog we once knew, my family and I made the decision that if he had such a short time to live, we are going to let him live his life to the fullest and took him off the medication. We had Shadow since he was six weeks old, barely big enough to fit in a purse, so I could not handle watching him suffer anymore. Proving everyone wrong and being a fighter like he always was, Shadow lived another three fulfilling years of chasing rocks, chasing after any bunny that would make it in the backyard and enjoying all the table scraps he could steal. Although it was a short time before my high school graduation when Shadow passed, he was 11 years old and I could not be more grateful for the time, the good and the bad, that I was lucky to spend with my first best friend.

Shadow's last vacation to Myrtle Beach

 The moment we walked in the shelter and saw his liter, full of twelve crazy puppies, I teared up; I didn't think I would be able to know who was good enough to try to fill Shadow's shoes as guard dog of the house. It was about a month of a quiet house, no four-legged friend running to the door to greet you and actually being able to eat a full meal without someone stealing it, before the family decided that maybe we should adopt a puppy from a shelter. It made it better to think that we would be helping out a dog in need and we would not be replacing Shadow, he would just have a friend up there in dog Heaven someday (At least that was my thought process). My Dad had began the search and found a shelter in Ohio that we chose to keep an eye on. We had went to the shelter once, but did not see anyone who was worthy of Shadow. The day that Dad had seen the liter online, he knew that Toby, or Eddie as they called him, was the one. When we went to visit, Toby was the crazy one of the liter, running inside and outside like there was no tomorrow, but when we had our private visit with him, he was so nervous. Toby would barely come near us and when he did warm up to us, he was very hesitant. From his behavior, we had known that there was a good chance that he was abused and we knew that it was going to be a challenge, but we were ready to take it on to give him a better life.

 

It was a challenge when Toby came home with us. Not only was Toby hesitant with people, he did not like loud noises, he did not like bags, he did not like when the stove was on, he did not like dog food, he did not like to be alone, he did not like to be in a crate, he was afraid of life in general. It took time for him to realize that not only were we going to be good to him, we were not going to abandon him. As soon as Toby realized we would do anything to make him happy, he would take advantage of it in every way possible (And never say a dog is not smart). I would reward him with a dog bone, my mother would reward him with ice cream (Mom quickly became his favorite when it came to food). I would attempt to run with him and he was lay down in the middle of the road - traffic and all, Dad would take him for a walk and ride whenever he wanted (Dad became his favorite when it came to stuff to do). And me, well I was the one who was there to let him sleep on my bed and couches that he would normally get yelled at for. On top of being there for attention purposes and to just spoil him rotten whenever someone else wasn't doing so (Which was very unlikely because he was spoiled with lots of butt rubs from my friends and creamers - Yes creamers - from my grandparents). 

Toby is a fan of Pittsburgh Sports - The Steelers are his favorite

Toby J (J for Junior of Shadow) in a nut shell is a nut ball, completely opposite of Shadow. Toby's daily life consists of begging for any table scraps that he could find (Eating literally anything except for tomatoes and grapes), trying to sneak out of the house to see if his neighbor friends were out to play with (Or sneaking into their houses to see what food he could find) and soaking up as much attention as he can (He enjoyed working on his tan). Long before the sad animal shelter commercials filled the air waves, Toby had nailed the "tortured dog look" to suck up any extra attention that could be given to him. With many nicknames, Toby J was called Bubba Loo (He enjoyed I Love Lucy reruns with me), Bub, Ham, Ham Sandwich, Tobster, Lover Puppy (Always a lover with the kisses, never a fighter unless he was attacking you with kisses) and Guard Dog (He would sound vicious when he was actually paying attention to bark at someone). Family vacations revolved around him - Toby had been to Myrtle Beach, the Outer Banks, the mountains, New York to see where Lucille Ball had grown up (not like he had really cared) and to Ohio to see family; Only one family vacation was taken without him and that is because Toby did not prefer to gamble in the casinos in Las Vegas. Enjoying rides while sticking his head out the window, sight seeing to new smells and places, meeting new dogs and other animals he didn't quite understand, trying to figure out new places and trying new food, running from waves that terrified him and soaking in the sun wherever he could find it.

Toby hated taking pictures & had A.D.D

While Toby is the most spoiled dog in the world, he is also one of the best dogs that you will ever find. So many good nights, bad days, busy moments and lazy times were spent with him. There is no feeling in the world like coming home to someone is right at the door waiting for you, wagging their tail and ready to give you love like no other. He may have been forced to listen to me as I blubbered like a basket case about some guy or laid with me as I felt like the gum under a shoe after a late night, but he always sat there and listened. The best proof of this was three months ago when I chose to leave my job, a job that was just so wrong in so many ways. I literally was coming home every day for five months frustrated, irritated and not happy with the way that my life was going, taking it out on anyone in my path, except for Toby. I would come into a house that held so much hostility because I was so unhappy, yet Toby would be there just taking it all away. I am a firm believer in God, faith and everything happens for a reason, the day I had prayed about the decision I had to make, I knew that God had given me this choice for a reason. After I quit my position, I had a lot of free time on my hands (too much time), trying to figure out my life and what was the next way to go, I always had him by myself to deal with the changes of life. While a lot of that time he spent sleeping while I was applying for jobs or running away from me as I danced around to loud music, most of that time I enjoyed spending my days watching movies with him, while editing pictures and creating a blog (Again, I had entirely too much time on my hands). Someone close to me had given me what seemed like a billion movies to fill my time and I watched every single one of those movies with Toby by my side, most of them he watched too (Or at least he entertained me and looked in the direction of the TV). These days all tied together, but these were days that I would never have gotten to have with him unless I had left my position. It was like being reunited with my best friend after such a long time and we had become inseparable.

Spending this extra time with Toby made me see that he was growing old. While he looks old in most of the pictures I have, he had gotten white in the face at a very young age (I always told people he was as handsome as Richard Gere). Some of the things that he had enjoyed, like playing with his toy duck or running with his friends, he had given up or slowing down with. Toby enjoyed Sunday football and the tailgate food while watching the big game - chicken wings with ranch dressing, chips and sour cream and pretty much anything with cheese on it, but he chose to not eat as much as we were used to (Yes that sounds like a horrible diet for a dog, but at nine years old, Toby deserved to be happy with whatever he wanted). While I chose to joke that he was on a diet and pretend not to see it, it was last week when I saw that my "puppy" was not doing well. For whatever the reason, Toby was not a fan of being in my room for long periods of time (Shadow was never either and we could never figure out why). Normally I would sleep alone, but that night, Toby stayed with me and I would never kick him out, even if that meant me sleeping in the most uncomfortable position. He was sprawled out over the entire bed, stretching all night, punching me in the face a few times, but by the morning he couldn't get any closer to me, with his leg shaking uncontrollably. Throwing a blanket on him, I thought he was he was just cold and it quickly went away. It wasn't until I noticed the shaking everyday since. He also had this "cough" that sounded like a cat with a hair ball. I would catch him licking his fur a lot and I chose to blame the bad breath on this, hoping that time would just pass, but knew that something else was wrong with my big guy. 

Within days I was crying to my family that Toby was unsteady on his feet and he had barely eaten at all that day. I begged my family to take him to the vet, because something had to be seriously wrong. They knew something was wrong too, but that didn't want to know what it was. I knew that it could be bad news, but had faith that their was something we could be doing. The next day, my family and I had spent the day at the vet learning that Toby had lost twenty pounds in the matter of weeks and that his kidneys were failing. It was like literally being smacked in the face with reality and a horrible dream. The bad breath was due to the toxins building up in his system, anorexia and depression all symptoms of chronic kidney failure, on top of the fact that tremors (his leg shaking) were a side effect. We were willing to do anything to help him through this and to fix whatever was happening, but as the doctor had put it, "If he was a human, he would be in the hospital right now on dialysis, waiting for a kidney transplant." All that we had left to do was try to keep him hydrated, try to keep food in him and try to keep him comfortable, because we might only have days left. 

Dad had tried dying Toby's fur for a more "young look"

Devastated that my family was losing a major staple to our life, I stopped everything that I was doing to spend every moment with him. I could handle him being sick, I knew he was. I could handle pills, food, meds or whatever I had to do to keep him healthy, I have done it before. It was the moment the doctor said that their was nothing we could do and that he could only have days that I was lost, broken, confused. The petty things that I have been worried about the past month no longer mattered, the annoying things my family did didn't bother me as much, stressing over this guy that I love who takes days to respond to a text was not my concern at the moment, Toby was. It was in that moment that I had realized God had given me the choice to leave my job and the ability to have so much time off for a reason; It was so that I could reconnect with my best friend and spent this extra time with him before Shadow gets to see him in that big dog park in the sky. The only time that I was not with him in the past four days was to go to work and even that was painful to not be around him for. We have had our bad moments, where have I spent two hours under a Christmas tree holding him as he was shaking (He never like the Christmas tree, but that was where he was most comfortable), to our good moments where he wags his tail like nothing was wrong and kissing away my tears thinking I am the crazy one for crying. All I know is that every moment that I get with Toby now is a blessing and that everything truly happens for a reason.

Toby loved going on trips anywhere we would take him

For those of you that have read this and think I may be a lonely, single "dog lady" that had nothing better to do with her day than write a blog for sympathy - I warned you in the beginning this was for pet lovers and clearly you are not lucky enough to be a pet lover (You also forgot the fact that I love all animals). To my friends that have checked on me every day to make sure I am stable - Thank you for checking in on me and knowing how hard this is for me. I am okay for the moment (Clearly enough that I have chosen to write this and not pick up the Jack Daniel's bottle). To anyone who works at the veterinarian office or at an animal shelters - Thank you for all that you do. I honestly don't know how you do what you do and appreciate all of the hard work that you do. And to all those pet lovers out there and to anyone who has ever lost an animal that has been close to you - I am sorry. I feel your pain so much and it is beyond me how we can ever love someone so much. I hope that you can appreciate the love for my dogs and can understand why I have written what I have for him.

Toby's last trip to Outer Banks

I don't know where this week will take us. I don't know how much longer Toby will keep fighting. I don't know which days will be good days and which days will be bad, but I know that it is one more day that I am lucky to spend with my best friend.. And today has been a great day.

New Year - Time To Start Breaking Bad Habits!

Happy New Year! With this new year, why not start off with breaking bad relationship habits? Don't act like you do not have them, because everyone has something that they do with the opposite sex that they would like to change. So you drunk texted your ex, again, to tell him how much he should be missing you, while he is with the girl that he cheated on you with (Nice job). Maybe you met a guy and slept with him after knowing him for two hours, thinking that he could be the one and haven't heard from your dream man since (Good try). How about another blind date gone wrong because you spent an hour and a half discussing how Harry Potter is the most brilliant piece of literature ever written (I have not done this - Stop thinking it - Just an example!). Whether you just do not want to make the effort to do so or you do not realize that you have these habits until you are looking back on it, there is something in everyone's life that they would like to change, it is just about making the effort to do it.  

If you really want to better yourself this year, you have to take a deep look at yourself and what you really want to see change. Example: You do not like the fact that you date the worst men, so you decide that you will pick better men to date this year. By deciding that, you can not just simply say that and be done with it. You have to look at where you have found these men and the type of men that you have dated in the past. If you have picked up every single guy that you have dated at the bar, time to raise your standards. If you have always been into the "bad boy", time to change your pattern. Bad habits in dating are cycles that we tend to keep repeating, not knowing anything different until we put it all together and realize that we have been doing these same things in all of our relationships.

Sometimes it is as simple as looking at the behavior that you are doing and think, "Do I really need to do this to get by?" While it may seem at the time that you do, you will end up regretting your action more than you will enjoy it. You repeat this bad behavior over and over again and expect a different outcome from performing it, but that will not happen. A perfect example of this would be texting while you have been drinking. Nine chances out of ten, it is a bad decision. Not only does it give off a bad impression, but if you picked up a "bad boy" they are falling in love with the sight of you in their bed that they will be seeing later and you can kiss a "normal" relationship goodbye. These habits will not get you any farther in a relationship and if they do, they are going to land you in the wrong relationship. It is time to move on from these bad habits, so you can find or perfect a relationship that can be great.

Bad habits have been something that have been on my mind for the past couple weeks. Whenever something bad has happened to me, I would want to see him. Whenever something good has happened, I would want to tell him. Whenever I was watching a movie he had given me or a show we had talked about, I would want to know his opinion. Whenever I was sad, I would want him to be the one to make me happy. So now that we are not "together" and I have told him that I can not be his friend right now, I have found these habits creeping up and annoying like an itch you can't scratch. I hadn't realized that I had done it until I looked back on text messages recently between my ex and myself, with every conversation being times where I had something big going on and needed him. Always running to him for relief had become a creature of habit and I was truly missing my friend.

So this week I broke an extreme habit; I broke it off with my ex once and for all by giving his things back. It was not his choice at all by avoiding it the past month to come get his things and making excuses every time we discussed it. This was a major excuse to keep trying to talk to him and we both knew it, making it extremely difficult to give up, but it was more difficult looking at his things in my bedroom everyday and having that constant reminder of him not being around. I had written a letter that I put with his things that I dropped off at his house, explaining why I was doing the things that I was doing and that I needed to do this for me for this new year. In return I have heard nothing. In the back of my mind I expected to hear nothing, but there is a part of me that will always be optimistic for him and the good guy that I know he can be. I have not tried to contact him since that day. Even though I want to lash out at him in every way possible for not contacting me, whether to be mad that I did what I did or at least to tell me he received the things, I have stuck to my guns and when the time is right, if ever, I hope that we will have that conversation that we need to. Until then I will keep forcing myself to stay strong and know that this is for the best. I wish that I can say that it is going to be easy for me to break this habit of not wanting to talk to him and know that everything is okay with him, but at least I know that I am starting the new year off right. If it is meant to be, it will be, but for right now, breaking this habit is the best stepping stone for me.




Repeat Song Of The Week:

"Restless Dream" - Jack's Mannequin. "It's funny how the words we never say can turn into the only thoughts we know". Not a lot of people have heard of this band, but they are my absolute favorite not only for the music itself, but the lyrics in their songs and this is the perfect example. The lead singer, Andrew McMahon is a genius when it comes to the music he writes and the heart that he puts into it. A break up is like a "restless dream", it seems like this never ending process that just keeps bringing thoughts back to everything that you want to forget and move on from.


Repeat Movie Of The Month:

One of my favorite books/movies - He's Just Not That Into You - Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Bradley Cooper, Justin Long and several other great actors/actresses. If you can't find a character to relate to, then you may be asexual or a nun, because they really touch on every possible relationship that can be out there. While it is a funny, romantic comedy, it also touches on things in relationships that you might not even realize that you are doing and can help you look at things differently.