RIP Izzy the Terror
This morning our dog, Isabelle (Izzy for short) passed away after almost 20 years of being on this earth, over 19 of those spent here with my stepdad. She was a doberman-hound mix with some great dane splashed in there for good measure. And she was a terror.
I mean this in the best sense of the word; after all, I was a terror myself once too. While she reserved most of her love (understandably) for my stepdad, she was very protective of my mother and I as well. Having an untrained doberman mix by your side is amusing, annoying and a little frightening all at the same time. She was especially loyal when my parents started eating meat again and the table scraps got that much better. Strangers were usually caught off guard at best when visiting the house for the first few times because of her, um, gusto in greeting and escorting them into the house. She was fairly merciless when it came to the local wildlife and on one sobering occasion a neighbor’s dog — in fact, she caught a small rabbit not a week ago. Needless to say this happened pretty quickly. I only knew her for the last 6 years of her life but she was a dog worth remembering.
I don’t want to make this a TL;DR post so I will share my favorite Izzy story that perfectly demonstrates who she was. My stepdad’s former wife, who turned out to be a manipulative witch, was taking everything she could in the divorce out of spite. Including Izzy. My stepdad, R, was in such a haze that he let her go.
This woman moved to a medium sized city where you have to take your dog out on walks; considering the woman’s tiny frame and Izzy’s large one, this may have not been the best plan. Here, where Izzy lived and died, she was free to come and go as she pleased since our property sprawls out so far. But I digress, the woman was taking Izzy for a walk in the city when a bus passed, sent Izzy into a fit of giddiness and chasingness, and set off a sequence of events that began with Izzy running at full speed and ending with the woman with her shoulder dislocated. Needless to say, Izzy was back here on the farm within a few days. Through the darker years that followed, she kept R company while he lived alone. After my mom came along and all was revealed about just how sinister the ex wife’s financial plots were, the bus story became one of our favorite examples of karma. And schadenfreude.
She had a stroke about this time last year and lost her balance. She had gone completely deaf and was beginning to go blind when she died. Her death was quick — within a few hours of losing the ability to walk and crying she was euthanised. My mom gave her some morphine from a prior surgery while we waited for the sun to rise and the vet’s office to open. She started getting goofy and wiggly but she still couldn’t walk so they went through with the procedure. She couldn’t have gone more peacefully.
Nobody who reads my blog knows my dog, so this may mean nothing. But I’ve been having crying spells and my crying face is almost as bad as Kim Kardashian’s, so I felt like writing an obituary of sorts was in order. Maybe now you know her a little.
