Time To Go - Page 2

Very Sorry to hear of your recent loss. You and her had a great 14 years and I am so very sorry to hear of her degeneration. That must have been so hard at the end.
May her memory carry on.

Whisper

Has to be the most difficult time of owning a dog; RIP beautiful and run free, pain free. So sorry for your loss Sunny.

Such a beautiful girl. I remember the times you told us about her and what a gift she was in your life. I was sorry to see the post. It's never the right time or a good time but 14.5 is a blessing. I'm glad you were given such a wonderful gift as Star and that she and you had such a good life together.

Run free beautiful Star and every once in awhile nudge Sunny's hand just to remind her you are still there by her side..

I've really been blessed to have had 3 GSDs who made it to age 14.

The previous dog to Star was Ranger, a male GSD I rescued at age 3. He'd spent most of his life on an 8 foot chain.

I trained him to be my hearing ear dog. I am seriously hearing impaired, and rely on a cochlear implant to keep me connected to the world. When I take it off at night, I am pretty close to being totally deaf, and certainly can't hear things like the smoke alarm, telephone, or alarm clock. I trained Ranger to alert me to these things.

One night, Star put her paws up on the bed and woke me up. This was very unusual for her, but I assumed she needed to go outside. I let her out, but 10 minutes later, she was waking me up again.

What the heck? After thinking about it, I remembered the last time one of my dogs had done this, it was Ranger alerting me to the low battery beep in the smoke alarm. I got up, walked to the other end of the house where I'd left my 'ears' and put it on. As soon as I did, I could hear that annoying chirp.

I had never given Star training to alert me to the smoke alarm, and I didn't even own her at the time I was training Ranger. As incredible as it may seem, she must have picked up the behaviour from observing what he did when the smoke alarm or low battery beep went off!

At the time this happened, Ranger was lying beside the bed, snoring. He often snored loudly enough that I could hear it even without my implant. I made the decision that night to train Star to take over his job, and she did very well at it!

She started to go deaf in her senior years, and by the time she died, was pretty much totally deaf. I didn't worry about it, as I now live in a house that has a smoke detector with a flashing light, and an alarm clock that vibrates the mattress. And if anyone calls me while I'm sleeping, well, they will just have to wait for morning for me to call them back!

Not really a surprise that Star should have picked up on Ranger's behaviour and copied it ; many dogs are intelligent enough to learn what to do in given situations from other dogs in their household. When we keep only one dog we miss out on seeing this happen. Very glad she 'got' this, to your advantage ! Unfortunately sometimes they pick up how to do things from other dogs that are NOT useful to or wanted by their human housemates ;-) ;-) ;-)

LOL, too true, Hund!

Aw, geez, Sunny, I'm sorry...you saw a lot of life changes with Star by your side, over the course of nearly fifteen years, that's for certain, and any time you spoke of her it was clear how much she meant to you and what a really good dog she'd proven herself to be for you. Fourteen and a half years is not a milestone many members of the breed ever see, and Star clearly made the most of that time with you. May your memories of her, and the experiences you shared together, help soften the sadness of her absence.

Thank you, Hexe!

Still have Eskaroo, and my little black cat to comfort me.