Grieving dogs

Last February we lost our black and tan doxie. His name was Thor. The red doxie was his sister from a different litter. There was about 18 months between them in ages.

For the longest time we didn't only lose Thor, but his sister, Ernie, was lost to us, too. We did everything we could to make her world a little better. But she went into a severe depression. One we worried she'd never come back to us from.

We were going to take her to the vet to get her checked for other serious conditions. Something happened, I can't remember what was going on and I couldn't make the appointment. I planned to reschedule it for the next week.

But in the early days of May, slowly, Ernie started coming back to us. From the time Thor left us, until the last couple weeks, Ernie lived on the couch. We took her food to her there. We took her water to her there. We carried her outside to do her business. It was horrible.

But now, she gets off the couch. She goes outside on her own. She gets a drink of water on her own. She even plays with the new puppy some.

I just wanted to let people know that if you have two dogs who have spent their lives together and you lose one of them, do not give up on the survivor. It takes time. But there is a chance they'll come around.

Burt, our new dog, will never mean as much to Ernie as Thor did. She still gives him more teeth kisses than tongue kisses, but at least now she'll be around him and even play a little with him.

And she has her smile back. How we missed her smile.