Missing Miss Gwen

Several times a day I think to myself, it’s time to administer the meds. But then it isn’t. Not anymore.

You see….Miss Gwen passed earlier this month, at age 14y1m. That’s quite an achievement for a Labrador. Especially for one that had her litany of issues. I won’t bother to enumerate them, but over time they were many.

Even so, she was a happy grrrl. That was her gift. She loved basically everyone and everything. Except peas. She didn’t like peas. This we only recently learned.

Gwen came to us in February of 2011 by way of Southeast Texas Labrador Rescue. We’re told she had been found abandoned in a Walmart parking lot in Humble, TX. It follows that from the very beginning she suffered from separation anxiety.

She had been fostered at a home in Clear Lake. It happened that I went by myself to collect her one Saturday afternoon. So it was that she bonded to me first. She was a self-professed daddy’s grrrl for the rest of her life.

Dickson and Shadow, our two earlier dogs, had enjoyed weekly visits to day care. It gave them some place to expend their energy and socialize. It helped offset my routine business trips. Not Gwen. She passed her temperament exam with flying colors, but I had been sitting at the edge of the room. She found the idea of being left at day care terribly upsetting. So, she was homebody.

At the outset she was companion to Shadow, our male Labrador. He loved her so, from the very moment she arrived. They were inseparable. Given a  fear of water, he was a rare, non-swimming, Labrador. In parks, he would wade into the water to keep an eye on his grrrrl.

She was befriended by our cats, one of whom even seemed to mentor her. She raised Julio, our Dogo Argentino mix, some six years her junior. Over time, she raised a few kittens, too.

As she got older, she became even more of a velcro dog. She didn’t like to let me out of her sight. She’d quite often follow me around the house or the yard. If I left my desk to get a refill of coffee, she’d allow me a few minutes, then come looking.

She was something of a foodie, seeking to try every treat and taco. I’ll never forget the look she gave me when she first tried a grilled pork chop. It was an odd combination of elation and damnation. As it to say, “That’s very good…but you’ve been holding out on me!”

In 2013, I transitioned to working from home full-time, with zero business travel. This was ideal for Gwen. She became one of my co-workers. She had both human and canine company all day, every day…for most of her life.

The loss of an innocent is a crushing thing. But their presence in our lives is just such a gift. I firmly believe that dogs make us better people. I miss her dreadfully, but I am grateful for her company and council all these years.

The above is a slide show of some 41 images of our grrrrllll. You can navigate using the left/right links or the arrow keys.