hannah-banana

so... i'm in canada. i came home for a week to renew my passport so burton and i can go on our trip to europe -- thank you passport canada for only expediting applications submitted in person, it was just so convenient and inexpensive. ;) the fun part is i got to come home to canada and i haven't been home in a year and a half. truth is, i was getting pretty homesick. it's not like the kind of homesick where i miss my actual home necessarily, but i just LOVE the grey and pink sky and pebble beaches and black ocean and green green really green grass and evergreens everywhere and deer in every other front yard and the accents and the people... and the rain. there's just something about the rain in the pacific northwest... it's just different. i love it. and then there's my dog. normally i try to shoot for funny and uplifting on my blog (or at least funny... and maybe that's at the expensive of others or myself, but sometimes that can be uplifting)... but i'm going to talk about my dog for a sec. remember #44 on the list of 100 things about moi? ("i could make myself cry right this very minute if i start to think about the possibility of my dog dying. and i'm going to leave it at that so i don't.")... well, i've had my moment's this weekend. i came home and instantly noticed that my cute (albeit, fat) dog looked something similar to a bison. she had a big hump on her back... something like a fatty tumor, possibly cancer (apparently a big problem in the golden retreiver breed). hannah (that's her name) is about 12 years old... something like 84 in dog years... so she's pretty much like having an old lady in the house. she aches and deals with arthritis and lays around a lot (although, that's not new... see pictures)... she needs help getting up, needs to lay down after too much exercise. and now she's got a tumor. so it looks like this is it for my furry friend. if she was young and vigorous, it might be worth attempting to remove the tumor, but we're all coming to grips with the fact that it's just that time. she's a really funny dog... she's lazy (hence the fat) and she loves lettuce over dog treats (which you'd think would help the fat... but it doesn't seem to) and she plays dead when you say "bang" and she doesn't like to catch balls and she sits and watches frizbees wiz passed her head. she likes our jacuzzi tub and she knows that when i come home, she gets to sleep on the bed with me (which has gotten more and more difficult the fatter and older she's gotten... she slept on the floor this time, cause she can't climb on the bed). she used to roll her eyes at me when i would try and get her to come running with me (sometimes she'd even hide) and she LITERALLY pouts when i leave to go back home. sits next to a wall and leans... won't look at me... it breaks your heart (burton's seen it, he'll attest to this). she's just a really funny dog and i have to say that putting your dog down is right up there with leaving home for the first time and losing your first love and all those things that you know you'll get over but in the moment you feel like your heart is broken into a million pieces. i'm a sentimental person, so of course saying good bye to my dog is an emotional thing--and unless you've had a dog that thinks you're the greatest thing in the whole world and can hardly contain themselves when they see you no matter how much time has passed between visits, you'd probably never really get it. and so, i'll say good bye... shed some tears... go home and watch "all dogs go to heaven" and cry some more and then carry on until the next puppy comes along and breaks my heart with those big brown eyes and i'll do it all over again.

but in the meantime, i'm just going to miss my hannah-banana.