Best Dog Ever

Rosalani. Rosy-Dosy. Rosabelle. Rosie.

Our sweet Rosie died on Sunday, August 28th, in the afternoon. She was 13 years old, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and our first child.

Rosie joined our family a couple years after we got married. Emmett's parents' dog Josie had puppies; one of them was Rosie. My in-laws kept Rosie for 2 years, but then had another litter of puppies and needed to downsize their dog population. They asked if we would like her, and we cautiously agreed. They gave Rosie a tranquilizer, put her in her crate, and stuck her on a plane to Chicago. Poor dog! She avoided her crate forever after.

Some of our favorite Rosie memories:

• Snoring. She slept on our bed in the wintertime, and in our room all year long. Her snoring was distracting at first, but we grew to appreciate the sound.
  
• Whining. Emmett's dad taught her to whine when he kissed her cheek. When we came home from work, we'd sit on the floor with her, and she would "talk" to us. When she was young, her whole body would wag when she was happy.
  
• Comfort. Rosie was a lap dog ... a large lap dog, but a lap dog nonetheless. She was lonely after being home by herself all day. As soon as I would sit on the couch, she'd hop up, flop on my lap and settle in for lots of petting.
• Eating. Rosie's stomach was made of iron, and her hunger had no limit. She could clean out her dog bowl in less than a minute. Woe to any visiting dog who liked to take his time eating; Rosie would lurk nearby to gulp unguarded food. She would also eat any food that we left out. Over her lifetime, she ate a bag of snack-sized Kit Kats, several loaves of bread, dry salad dressing packets, carrots, popcorn, and more. She turned her nose up at mushrooms, but that may have been the only food I ever saw her refuse.
• Thunder and fireworks frightened her. Many times Emmett would wake up in the middle of a stormy night to find Rosie standing on his chest, breathing heavily into his face.
• She was gentle and tolerant with the kids. Even when our toddlers were at their grabbiest - yanking her ears and tail mercilessly - Rosie would roll her big brown eyes over at us to ask, "Why do you let them do this?" and then she would carefully get up and move to a kid-free corner.
• Rosie liked to think she was tough, but we knew better. Once, she found a dead moth on the sidewalk. She stopped a few feet away, pointed her nose right at it, and growled, but wouldn't get any closer. Another time, she cornered a large cat in our apartment's backyard. Rosie growled and hovered, but didn't know what to do. Finally, Emmett picked her up to bring her inside. He said that if he let her stay there, the cat was going to get impatient and claw Rosie in the nose.
• When she lived in Hawaii, she would chase racquetballs with the other dogs. In Chicago, she would run to where the ball landed, then casually walk away, leaving the ball untouched in the grass. Instead, she liked to run up and down our hallway, chasing a rope or a bone.
  

By the end of her life, Rosie had slowed down a lot. She still loved to eat, but she spent most of her time snoring on the tile floor in the kitchen. We had decided that when she stopped eating, we would consider having her put to sleep.

On the morning of the 28th, she didn't eat her breakfast. That afternoon, she went outside and lay down in the yard. Emmett carried her in; he and I sat with her and petted her as she quietly stopped breathing. And then we cried.

We miss our sweet girl.