I think this photo sums up ours pretty well.

That’s my sister-in-law with her two dogs, Fawkes, and Chester.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas this year. Obviously, Brian and I had a bad one last year and the memory of Christmas is a blur of misery. Combine that with my sister-in-law getting a divorce, and I think we were all determined to bring the awesome. I got my tree and pulled out my ornaments (I buy 50% off nerdy Hallmark ornaments the day after Christmas every year, they make me giggle). We do our festivities on Christmas Eve because we do the day itself at grandma’s, so I made a nice dinner that we all enjoyed, we opened presents, and Lauri and I painted our nails while watching a great Christmas movie: Die Hard. We were supposed to make cookies but we never got up, and the only vegan things at grandma’s are the leftovers I bring with me, so I managed to not go into a sugar coma this year! Purely out of laziness, though.

I really liked all of my gifts this year. The first thing I got was two days before Christmas. I almost cried when I opened a package to find cookies, chocolate, a Lunabar, and these ornaments from Panda With Cookie.

And here is my horrible photo of dinner, stuffed tofurkey roast, potatoes and gravy, steamed veggies, Joanna’s butternut squash lasagna, and wheat rolls.

I did not get a single non-vegan thing this year (well, except an Urban Decay primer potion set from Lauri, but she graciously took it back to use herself)! My father-in-law got me a cowl from Treewool Knits and the Spork-Fed cookbook. My sister-in-law and I both put a ton of larabars in each others stockings. Oh, vegans and the people who love them. Brian had bought me a bunch of stuff to upgrade my computer so we could play Dead Island together, and he made me wait until Christmas to install them. So he did that, and we played and either by random fluke or our very bad in-game driving, I got incredibly nauseous, violently threw up my whole dinner, and spent the rest of the night watching reruns of The Office and waiting for my nose to stop burning. And yet, it was still the best Christmas we’ve had in years!

If the answer is yes, quit peepin’ in my windows, dude!

So this is Lily, my father-in-law’s new dog.  If you think she looks a lot like Abby, it’s because they are the same kind of dog.  Lily came from a shelter in a nearby town.  From what we can piece together, she was definitely bred, kept outside most of the time (she has such rough paws), and was never taught a damn thing.  She’s six years old and not in the least bit housebroken (we’re working on it) and I had to teach her how to sit.  She kept peeing on the bricks, which is something a dog has to be taught to do (gross, then your patio/whatever smells like dog pee!).  Despite all of that, she is incredibly cheerful and likes everyone and everything, even the cats, which is all that really matters.  She is supposedly six years old but she acts like a puppy.  She doesn’t know what toys are but thinks your hand is there to slobber all over.

She REALLY likes to lay on my bed and stare out of all of the windows (which is what she’s doing in the photo above), and since this is a sun room she has a pretty good view of squirrels, birds, and the people in the parking lot behind us.

Most of the time she actually looks like this:

Doofus.

I’m closing the comments on this entry because while I appreciate everyone who took the time to comment, at this point I would rather not have the comments pop up in my inbox.  I’m starting to heal a little bit and the reminder is like a tiny jab in the heart.  If you were going to leave a comment, know that the thought is enough.

Hey guys, i’m sorry to make such a downer post on the start of the holiday weekend, but I want to get this out and over with.  I also wanted to make this as a post on my website so I can link to it and not have to repost it all over the internet.

There’s no funny way for me to say this, so:

Tonight while my father-in-law was out walking my dogs, a big dog ran up and attacked Bonny.  She was killed pretty much instantly.  I wasn’t up to grilling my father-in-law for every last detail, but the dog was being chased by its owners, and my father-in-law turned around as he heard them yelling, right as the dog got to Bonny.  I don’t blame the owners of the dog per se, but animal control will still be called in the morning because any dog that kills another dog needs to be investigated.  I couldn’t live with the idea that this dog might harm another dog in the future.  Chester has a problem with children and some males, and my greatest fear is that we will enter a situation where I can’t control him, he will bite somebody, and then I will lose him (an example would be when people let their children run up to him in the park, I start backing away with him pulled behind me and chant ‘he bites’ until they run after their kids).  I’m rambling already.

I don’t think I need to express in words how much Bonny was loved.  The real pain is that her death was unfair and sudden and utter bullshit.  Chester is almost 11ish, Fatty is 15.  I have elderly animals and I expect to come home one day and find them dead.  Even though Bonny is a small dog and we’ve had to snatch her up a few times because of bigger dogs, we weren’t ready for this.  Not that anyone is, but you know what I mean.

Still, I am one of those people who really does believe that it’s better to have loved and lost.  Some people immediately declare that they will never get another dog/cat again because it hurts too much to let go.  Not me.  I loved Bonny, I am glad that we got 3 1/2 years with her, and someday we will meet another dog who belongs with us like Bonny did.  Not anytime soon, but someday.

If you haven’t followed my site for long and haven’t heard me talk about her, let me tell you a little bit about Bonny.  She was born with an eye that didn’t produce tears, initially we medicated it three times a day, but after a year and a half, the eye was removed surgically.  We’re pretty sure that she had no vision in it originally, so having one eye was no big thing for Bonny.  She had no depth perception which meant she would sometimes jump off of the dining room table, but other than that, she was fine.  When people would ask me how much I paid for her since she was a yorkie, I would usually say that I got her for free because she was defective.  She had huge ears that stood up and the longest tongue, and she licked without prejudice.  The only people who didn’t like her are the ones who don’t appreciate dog spit.  I often got compliments/stares when we went to the park, and most people didn’t know she only had one eye until I said something.  She heard me say ‘bad kitty’ to the cats so often that she would run up and bark at them if they scratched at the furniture.  She wasn’t as smart as Chester, but she was still very clever.  She was obsessed with toys, and even if you buried her toy in the couch, she would go apeshit until she had it in her mouth again so she could hit you with it.  She had such a big mouth that she could fit a whole tennis ball in it.  I could go on forever.

Thanks to everyone who loved Bonny, if only virtually.

I’m going to get morbid after these cute pictures.  If that makes you uncomfortable, I understand, and you’re free to stop reading here.

This is actually the first pet death i’ve dealt with that involves me actually seeing them.  Like I said, Fatty is 15, she was my first cat.  All of my parents dogs got hit by cars or ran away, I never saw them.  I had a cat named Wonder Mutt who got (most likely) eaten by a coyote, I just never saw him again. When my father-in-law first brought her to me, I just…looked at her.  He was apologizing because he felt at fault since he was walking her, and I just kept telling him it was okay.  I kept touching her ears and her face and hoping she would wake up.  She didn’t have any visible blood (I didn’t realize at the time that she had a little, but it was on the side touching me) so she just looked asleep.  I took me a good five minutes before I started to really cry.  Brian was out at a movie so his phone was off, so we put her on a towel in a box and waited for him to come home.  It was the longest 30 minutes of my life.  I went between staring out of the front door and going back to the dining room to pet her.  I couldn’t stop touching her.  She felt too warm to me, which wasn’t helping my irrational thought that she would wake up.

Brian had a similar initial reaction that I did, but if he wants to go into details of his thoughts and feelings that’s up to him.

We buried her next to a bush in the garden in the snow.  Bonny hates the snow and cold and I kind of lost it when Brian was digging the hole.  I tried really hard to fight it so I wouldn’t have a panic attack.  Even though I know that Bonny is gone and we were just burying her body, I felt like an asshole for putting her in the cold.  I feel like an asshole for letting my dog down.  I feel like an asshole for letting Brian down.  I feel like an asshole for unloading all of this on the internet and burdening my readers with my emotions.  Some people spill their feelings at the drop of a hat, I don’t, so this is weird for me to do.  I use humor to deal, so i’ve already made jokes about how much will save on dog food (Bonny obviously didn’t eat much), how no one better get me a puppy for Christmas, how there is now no one to keep the cats in line when I yell ‘bad kitty’.