The Servant's Quarters

Anyone who's been following my posts online for the past few months is probably familiar with the saga of our beloved Jenny. If you aren't up to speed and are interested in learning more, you might want to read the story at the following links:

http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/03/my-girl.html
http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-girl-sequel.html
http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-beginning-for-jenny.html
http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/04/goodbye-jenny.html
http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/04/shes-alive.html
http://tjbutler.blogspot.com/2009/04/pass-peaches.html

Long story short for anyone who doesn't want to wade through all that - Butlers find stray, sickly dog in their backyard. Turns out to be the sweetest dog in creation. Butlers adopt dog. Dog turns out to be too sickly to keep. Butlers return dog to Humane Society. Terribly sad but cheer up when they discover that an employee at the Humane Society adopts sickly dog and everyone lives happily ever after.

And now, the rest of the story....

Last evening, we took Molly and visited the Humane Society on our way to Living Word for our mid-week meeting around the fire pit. Of course, we wanted to visit all of the cute puppies. However, our real main mission was to see if we could find out the latest info on our beloved Jenny. Was she still alive? How was her health? Was she living happily ever after?

We had to wait around for a while to talk to the manager of the place. When we arrived, she was busy assisting a family in their adoption of a dog. Finally, we had her ear. I introduced myself and told her we were there to find out what had happened to our first adoptee, Jenny (a.k.a. Popcorn). She remember us immediately, and she was eager to help us.

She sat down at the computer and began looking for the record of Jenny's adoptions. (Of course, we were thinking as she looked that the story might not have the ending that we wanted if she had to look up Jenny's records rather than just tell us that she was still doing well with her new family.) It took a few minutes, but she found the info she was looking for.

Jenny had lived in her new home for about two months. Like at our house, she was appreciated for the incredibly loving, affectionate dog that she was. However, her health had not improved, and we had been right that the problems we had been seeing were indicative of deeper, more serious problems.

Things finally came to a head for our dear girl around the beginning of June. She was found to have grown a tumor that was blocking her urinary tract. She was completely unable to void. An operation to clear the condition would have cost around $2000, and there was no guarantee that more tumors weren't growing in other areas of her body. (That was definitely something we suspected was going on when we owned her.) So, Jenny's adopted mom elected to have her put down.

Heather, the Human Society manager, remember that her employee had been very upset and had to take a day off of work to grieve the loss. Also, her surviving dog was so grieved at Jenny's death that the woman adopted yet another dog from the Humane Society as a companion for her pet. Obviously, others had the same reaction to Jenny that we did.

We walked out of there somber and not a little sad. We weren't exactly mourning because it had been months since we had seen Jenny. But we still loved her, and the news of her death was hard. But on the other hand, we had clearly made the right choice by taking her back to the Humane Society and adopting Molly instead. We were grateful that we had not taken a chance on her and had not been the family that had to decide to end her life.

We talked on the way to church about Jenny, remembering the week she had been ours. When we returned home, we pulled up some pictures of her on the computer. We were delighted to find out that Olivia had made a brief video of Jenny. There she was on the screen, drinking, waddling around. She even gave a bark and one of her little jumps at the end.

That was our Jenny.

Good-bye, girl. I'll never forget you.