today i have to say goodbye to my dear friend Toby.
the winter of 2000/2001 was a great time for me. Erin and i were engaged that winter and that was also when we first met our Toby. he was a shy but loving pup and was smart as a whip. one look at that little guy and i was hooked.
some of my fondest memories of Toby are from that first year. the house we had at the time had one small bathroom upstairs. Toby, never wanting to be too far away, found that he could squeeze himself behind the toilet so as to stay close but not get stepped on. i'm pretty sure that his heart broke a little when he outgrew that small space and found himself banished to the hallway instead.
i think that Toby was more excited than i was when i finally got around to hanging my dartboard that first fall. he found himself strangely attracted to those shiny flying darts and would muster every bit of energy he had to jump up in an effort to grab them. finally he realized that he was way to small and too slow to actually snag one out of the air so he adopted a new strategy; bark at the dart then jump on me. it was cute when he was a twenty pound pup. to this day, i couldn't shoot darts if he was in the room.
as he grew older, Toby became a little more introverted. he still loved trips to TCBY for frozen yogurt and summers at the lake but was easily spooked by anything that rolled and even got a little skittish on our walks if a mailbox looked suspicious. toby was just a bit of a home-body, and that was perfectly fine with me. he was the best nap buddy a guy could ask for. he loved to curl up next to me on the couch and i defy anyone to lay with that warm fuzzy boy and not fall asleep!
these last few weeks have brought us some pretty bad news. Toby has an extremely aggressive form of cancer in his mouth and his vet warned that we wouldn't have much more time with our Big Daddy. (which is Erin's favorite term of affection for him) we are torn between loosing him sooner than necessary and making him suffer longer for our selfish reasons.
until a few days ago, i couldn't understand how people could get so emotional over the loss of a pet. now i get it. today erin and i made the impossible decision to have Toby put down. i'm sad. i'm sad that our boy is leaving us much earlier than we ever thought he would. i'm sad for our other dog, Charlie Brown. Charlie won't know what to do without his Toby. i'm sad for Jonah that he'll only really know Toby through pictures and stories. mostly, i'm sad to loose my friend.
i must admit, Toby's anxiety did get the best of me on occasion. he and i weren't always on the same wavelength. but, if i had it all to do over again, i couldn't ask for a better dog than Toby.
goodbye my old friend. i'll miss you dearly.
