Annie

I've been dreading writing this entry.  Annie has always been a complicated dog from the moment we rescued her.  She bit people far more times than we'd like to admit and we always "justified" it away (her history in this regard is far too long for me to type out here - - Ryan wrote a long Facebook post about much of it). Unfortunately, she bit one of the workmen working on our kitchen wall hard enough to draw blood.  Ryan was on his way home from class for the weekend when he got my text letting him know.  By the time he had finished his drive home we had both come to the same conclusion; we were unable to do anything further to save Annie.  We went for a long walk together with the dogs before we picked Katy up from school for the day to gather our thoughts and went by the vet to talk to them.  We set a date to have Annie put to sleep a little over a week from then.  It gave us a chance to say our goodbyes.....  I'm still overwhelmed even looking at pictures of her, but I know we made the right decision for all of us.  We decided to not tell Katy until very close to the end to not upset her.  I talked to her teacher (who is also the deputy headmaster of her school) and with her blessing we kept Katy out of school the last Friday before Easter break so that we could take Annie to see the ocean on her final day.  Telling Katy was one of the hardest things I've done, but she took it as well as could be expected with a lot of good and well thought out questions once she processed things.

We took Annie to Southend-by-Sea and all had a decent time, although it was cold.  This is a compilation of pictures from that day and the week prior...