TOBY – Windfield Rudy
06/08/2009 – 06/05/2021
And then there were three.
I have been prepared for a long time to lose a dog; Benny is 16 next month, so it’s inevitable. I just didn’t expect Toby to go first.
Toby was my first puppy. My other dogs have been older when I got them. If Hector grows up to be half as good as Toby, we can be happy with him.
It’s not that Toby was without his faults – he loved to bark at cyclists, hated people running and always had to make his presence known with his loud bark – but nobody’s perfect, and perfection is boring. Toby enjoyed life at a more peaceful pace and liked the world to know he was here. His favourite thing to do was wait until someone had passed him and then let out a loud bark behind their backs – that, and food, of course. He loved his mealtimes.
Despite his health problems over the years, Toby had a good life. He spent his entire life after leaving his breeder’s in the same house, in the same garden, still finding new ground to cover and new smells to revel in. He had a modest career in agility, which he enjoyed on his own terms, and I stopped demanding or expecting much of him many years ago, knowing that his skin problems and ear trouble took their toll. I recent times, we also discovered that he had a heart murmur, and most recently, his liver gave in. The liver disease eventually resulted in multi organ failure, and the only fair thing was to let him go.
My first memory of Toby is the breeder putting him in my arms. While we saw the other puppies, he was picked for us because I particularly wanted a black & silver, so they gave us the puppy with the strongest black & silver colouring. When he first landed in my arms, he was a little coy, then started wagging his tail at me. He never stopped. Today, as we carried him into the vet’s and I held him on the table, he still wagged his tail. He went to sleep peacefully and surrounded by the two humans he loved the most – and who loved him the most.
I hope Toby gives an extra loud bark when he gets to heaven, just to let everyone know he’s there.
I’ll miss you every day for the rest of my life, little man. <3