The Max Story...

A sad day on the Gant Ranch….

Our oldest dog Max (8yrs) played too hard yesterday on some irrigation pipe which resulted in slicing his left hind leg. Not sure when it actually happened but yesterday evening I saw a bit of blood. True to Max’s demeanor he wouldn’t let me check it out to well and of course, Curtis was at work. We made an appointment today at the local animal Hospital at 10:30 and dropped him off with the expectation of a small surgery to stitch him up and then a Max back in action within a few days. We got a call from the vet (while in surgery with Max) saying that after she had sedated him and got the hair cut back, the cut was huge and deep: approximately 18” long and jagged and starting at this knee. The Dr. said that after cutting the dead tissue out there wouldn’t be enough to close the wound completely, thus causing further issues. With this finding came a proposed bill of $2-3 thousand dollars. Option #2 costs about the same and included a surgeon and skin graphs.As difficult as it was, unfortunately we had to go with option #3 …Euthanasia.  She put him down while he was already under anesthesia.

After the news, we went to work.  We had wanted to bring Max home to bury him. 

Then we headed to the vet clinic to pick him up.

We’ll probably hear more from William in the days to come.  We never know what’s going through his mind until after the fact.  It’s tough to know what to tell children; how much to expose not knowing what they’ll understand.  The truth is important and I wanted William to have some closure since he hadn’t seen Max die and when we went to pick him up at the vet, he wasn’t going to jump in the back of the car like he had always done before.  So, as hard as it was, I took William into the operating room where he lay on the table and talked to William about how Max had died as I stroked his fur.  He didn’t say anything, but I could tell the wheels were turning.  

We’ve had two other Border Collies die since we’ve lived here on the Gant Ranch and with each of them we wrote a little something about them to bury them with.  This time I asked William if he would color Max a picture that we could put with him.  I searched through his coloring book and found a picture of a dog with a ball-perfect for the dog who LOVED to play ball.  All on his own, he colored. 

About halfway through, he told me, “Mama, we need to color Max’s ouie!”  (You can see the red coloring on his hind leg…confirmation that he knew Max had been hurt).

 The vet clinic had talked to us about letting other other Border Collie Rags smell Max before we buried him.  They’ve had dogs go searching for their playmate after they’ve died because they didn’t know where they had gone. 

 The only thing we didn't throw that I wish we would have was an old chewed up tennis ball.  We've got plenty of those lying around (o;

William sat and watched us fill the hole in with dirt just like he sat and watched us dig it.  It wasn’t until it was ground level that he decided it was okay to help us by picking up big dirt clods and throwing them on the pile (o;  

There’s only a bajillion pictures we could go through and post of Max…here’s just a few.

Here’s a picture of William and I with our boys-May 2009 (Max is on my right side)

Here he is doing what he loved the most: playing ball (he was also a pretty talented Frisbee catcher)

From the Clackamas County Shelter in October 2007 until July 19^th, 2012, we definitely had to say goodbye too soon….We will miss you Max!

(...I might even miss his annoying tongue licking...might.)