February
2004 A Memorial to Mitch: A pure gold Golden lies down for eternity.
What makes for a perfect Golden
Retriever? A beautiful fluffy coat, a perfect shaped head, a loving personality?
(See picture of Mitch alone) How about a dog that loves you the first minute you
pet him and tells you with his whole body that he is now yours? (Please refer to
the picture of the first day I met Mitch. Roscoe in foreground).
How about a dog that doesn’t chew anything except his food and treats,
doesn’t jump on furniture, or steal tissues from the wastebasket or dirty
socks from the laundry? How about a
dog that rarely barks unless he sees something or someone that he doesn’t
recognize in your yard?
That is our Mitch, adopted
January of 2003 and who died February 23, 2004 after a very rapid decline from
cutaneous lymphosarcoma. Mitch came to us through his foster mom, Susan Modlin,
my sister. Mitch and his brother Roscoe were owner-turn-ins. I can tell you
Mitch never would have survived a move to Florida. Mitch was a snow
hog......that is not a typo...I’m so glad the last two winters had plenty of
snow for him to frolic, eat and roll in...he loved making doggie snow angels
...sometimes he wouldn’t even make it off the deck before he was rolling in or
licking off the white stuff on the deck. The two weeks before he died he would
go out and lie in the snow with his swollen, weeping eye on the cold ground. He
would lie there for a very long time..........breathing just a bit too
rapidly........
Mitch was meant to come and
live at our house. Mitch, my
husband Mark, Murphy the cat and me...we were a family of four that was meant to
be..... . Mitch was the third Golden we had taken in over the last three to four
years......he appeared to be the healthiest of all. He walked the first lap of
our daily walk everyday for over a year and was a big hit in the neighborhood,
not only with the humans but also a small mixed breed female named Tess and a
Chihuahua named Ti. Cats even
seemed to sneak up on him and it didn’t matter. Murphy curled up inside
Mitch’s back legs one morning the week before he died.
OK, so Mitch did eat Murphy’s
crunchies a bit too often. ....He was timid and would hide under my husband’s
desk, at Mark’s feet, during thunderstorms. We held his food and water bowls
head high for him when he ate and drank. We even found evidence of a “dog nest” on our bed when we
came home from one of our vacations. We
saw him getting off the sofa only one time.
That was in the last two weeks of his life as we walked in the front door
from the second lap of our walk. We wondered how long he had been getting on the
sofa...most of the time when we returned he was waiting by the front door
window....we must have walked a bit too fast that night or....he was just a bit
too slow in getting down on time. So
maybe he wasn’t perfect.......but he was my new best friend and helped me have
the happiest year of my life.
♫♫ Oh Mitchie dog,
I love you so. ♫♫.....sung to the tune of Oh Tannebaum, filled the
house and yard at Christmas time. I sang it to him over and over.... I could not
have dreamed that in less than two months he would be gone. We had him such a
short time, yet he left a huge impression on our hearts.
You made our family complete! Lie down for eternity, our dear
Mitch, your suffering is over. We love you so.
Thank you GRRACE for giving us such a perfect dog.
Mark and Cindy Modlin Adams