Saying goodbye to my sweet muse...

After almost 15 years with us, on Monday, we said goodbye to Izzy. It was the hardest decision I've ever had to make, but in the end it was a more peaceful parting than I could have imagined. Things have been going downhill very gradually over the last 2 years, Rich and I did as much as we could to keep Izzy comfortable. Early on we tried acupuncture and chiropractic kinesiology to help with her arthritis. We gave her 9 pills a day, 7 dispensed with peanut butter in a special method perfected by Rich. He cooked weekly in the crock pot for the girls over the last year, and we started using sign language with her as she lost her hearing. We often carried her down and sometimes up the stairs, took very slow labored walks which she still loved, especially to smell the earth and nature (Rich wrote a song about her years ago called "The Sniffer"). There was endless discussion between us about the consistency of her #2...which on a good day was something we termed 'turdular' and if she ate or what she ate. Through it all she taught us patience and compassion and made us better human beings. Since the day we adopted her in November of 1995 (from a vet office on North Avenue where she had been abandoned) she has brought more love to our lives and inspiration to my art work than I could have ever dreamed of.

I'm so grateful to Rich for helping to take such great care of her and to Alice for always being our comic relief. And other folks helped us through these senior years: Ben King from Urban Tailz, who took such gentle care of Izzy and Alice whenever we had to go out of town, Kelly Krueger of Articulate Animals...who was able to communicate Izzy's needs to me from pain med adjustments to letting me know that she was ready to leave her tired old body behind, our vet Dr. Gaspar who respected our wishes to just keep Izzy comfortable and worked with us on pain control, and in the end Dr. Amir Shanan, a hospice vet, who came to our home at 10 in the evening on Memorial Day and so compassionately helped us say goodbye. I was going to close with 'Rest in peace, Pumpkin...' but prefer to imagine her sailing through the air to catch frisbees in that big dog park in the sky...

Poem I wrote in 1999 written around the painting above:

"My Dog's name is Izzy and she's really neat, she chases frisbee and walks on four feet.
She chases squirrels, she chases cats, she even lives with two, how about that?
She loves me no matter what my mood, but she loves me most when I have food. "
She is the color of cinnamon and pumpkin pie...
I'm happy she's my dog and those are the reasons why! I love her so..."