It's been easy to let Gina handle the girl's birthday blogs the last couple of years, especially considering she does such an incredible job with them. I figured it was my turn to chip in on some level and so here I am blogging about our pooch.
Today, Casey turns ten years old. It's hard to believe that.
Earlier this week I finished reading
The Art of Racing in the Rain (suggested to us by Jeff and Martha) and it felt to coincidental not to take advantage of the timing and say something about Casey and about reaching this milestone. For those of you who have not heard of the book, if you are a dog lover it's definitely worth checking out. The entire story is told from a dog's point of view.
We got Casey in August of 2003, four weeks after we were married. He was 14 months old. By all accounts, he shouldn't be ours. The shelter that he was at had a policy in place that would not allow them to hold dogs for anyone. I had called about him on a Thursday after seeing his profile on petfinder.com but we were unable to get up to see him until that Sunday. On Fridays and Saturdays, the shelter he was at had open adoption days and if someone wanted him
during that time we would be out of luck. But, something happened in the Thursday phone call. What was supposed to be a five minute chat about the high level details for coming up to see him on Sunday (if no one claimed him yet) turned into a half hour conversation with the lady who answered the phone. They had interested families in him that weekend but without telling me they had decided to unofficially hold him for us because she was convinced we were going to be the right fit.
I fell in love with him right away. Gina took a little more convincing, but mainly because he pretty much looked like a train wreck with long dreadlock / matted hair (the picture above is from our first day home with him), not to mention his smell. To Gina's credit, she saw how I responded when he was brought out to see us and she never questioned whether we should take him or not. She let me make the decision. She also let me name him
Casey (and reference my love for baseball).
It's only fair that dog number 2's name will be up to her. :)
We had a lot of fun with him the first couple of years. In this picture we are up at a cabin with Matt and Ann before any of us had kids.
This picture is at Matt and Morgan's place in Chicago. He stayed with them for a couple of days while Gina, two month old Natalie, and I continued on to the St. Louis area for Andrea's wedding (Gina's cousin).
Casey's been there for pretty much every big event in our life since our wedding and in the process he's gone from being our baby #1 to our baby #4. At times it's been hard on him but he's transitioned well all and all.
He's been an amazing dog with our children. Some of the abuse he's endured from them as toddlers would drive anyone nuts but he's been incredibly patient and tolerant with them.
Here he's enjoying being outside, nothing like a little wind in the face to make his day.
At the park (Spring 2012)
With his girls (June 2012)
In the Art of Racing in the Rain, you're basically forced to think about life from your pet's perspective. It's a good thing to do.
I'd be so curious to hear what he has thought of the last nine years being an eye witness to so much of our lives. More than anything though, I'd just hope that he'd tell us that we'd done right by him and that he's thankful to us for giving him a good life. We probably should have taken him on more walks or maybe slowed down a bit and made a little more time for him but overall I feel like we've made sure he has been an integral part of our family.
He's been a great dog. We were so fortunate to have ended up with him.
As of today (his 10th birthday), I am going to try to do something going forward I haven't done very well with over the years. For so long I have dreaded the day that we will lose him. I've recognized that even though he's been here with us for so many incredible memories, he won't be here for even more. The times that I think about it (which is more often than I probably should), I get really really sad.
But, he's only ten. I need to keep telling myself that. Initially that seems like such a landmark number for a dog to hit but with some luck (because he is small) he could live another five years pretty easily, maybe even more.
Going forward, I am going to be very intentional about enjoying my time with him instead of dwelling on what he is going to miss out on with us down the road.
At a minimum, I owe him that.
