Today is a rough day in Lilly Town. First of all, my sister meets with her oncologist to get the full diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan now that she’s 10 days out from her mastectomy. She has been up for hours already, steeped in anxiety, so if you can send her a prayer for inner peace, I know she would appreciate it. Secondly, today is Katie’s last day in Lilly’s life. We. Are. Crushed.
We knew that this was the likely outcome … when we decided earlier this year not to adopt Katie into our family after many weeks of experimenting with the idea. (To catch up on that full saga, look at posts from late February and early March.)
We’ve known for a couple of weeks that this day was coming. We got the call last night that someone from Colorado Borzoi Rescue is picking Katie up today, and if all goes well, she’ll be with her new family on the other side of the state by the weekend.
We’ve been told they are retired and that have another borzoi and many grandchildren. We’ve heard they take at least a couple of good walks every day, so we’re confident that Katie will have a happy and loving home. We’re particularly pleased she’ll have a dog housemate because she clearly enjoys the company of canine pals.
When Katie got back from the kennel over the weekend (her current family had been on vacation), we knew we would only have a few more days to love on her and expose Lilly to Katie’s amazing dog-dog wisdom, so she has been at our house a lot these last couple of days — racing around the pastures, being silly (like in yesterday’s video), and sleeping on our sofas with Lilly and Ginko.
Lilly and I are headed to class this morning as a much-needed distraction, but we plan to bring Katie down this afternoon for one last visit. There will be many tears, I’m sure. Still, we will be forever grateful for the lessons Katie taught Lilly (and Ginko for that matter … he was a big bully when they first met, but they became friends too).
I’m still so amused with the time that Katie laid on the sofa, and Lilly brought her toy after toy from the basket. I wish I’d caught that on video. It was the sweetest thing.
Anyway, since I’ve deliberately kept my workload light this month so that I have the time and energy to handle family matters, I spent the better part of Monday making this Katie Tribute Video. It’s 5 minutes, which I know is long, but I could NOT help myself. You’ll see a couple of photos in particular used a few times, simply because they are my favorite ones.
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