Saying goodbye to a wonderful dog
If you have been a longtime reader of this blog you would have heard of Sparky, my little shadow as the rest of the family calls him. He was a pound dog that we sprung from captivity 8 1/2 years ago. He was a Miniature Pincher, although too tall for the show ring and about 2 years old when we adopted him.
He was originally to be a pet for my daughter who had recently had her own small dog die expectantly from heart failure. She named him Sparky because he was always on the go and full of energy. The little dynamo never did get attached to my daughter, instead he decided that I was the one to be adored and followed.
Whenever I was home he had to be right with me. When I left for work my husband would tell me that Sparky would wait at the end of our county driveway until I returned home. Sparky would be right there each day to escort the car down the driveway, without fail. When I left the house to go outside or down to the barn, Sparky would go ballistic in the house if he was not with me. The husband usually had to let him out and yell at me for not having him with me.
Last night I was going down to the barn to say goodnight to the horses and shut the barn up. Sparky was with me as usual. It was a warm evening and I took one of the horses out to give him a quick grooming. The horses were listening to something going on outside the barn, as all their heads turned towards the open doors. It was dark outside so I could not see anything. I did hear a “yip” in the distance and since we have coyotes in the area, I thought nothing more of it. Sparky was not in the barn with me since I had taught him not to come near the horses when they are being handled.
At 10pm I finished up in the barn and headed back to the house. When I went inside the house I looked for Sparky and went back outside and called his name. No sign of him. Husband went outside to call and look for him. About an hour later I went down to the barn to see if he was down there. It was getting near midnight and still no sign of Sparky. I was not that worried because there had been a few times that he stayed out all night but we usually saw him off a few yards away from the house just playing with the cats. The cats adored him.
It was something about last night that was different. Husband woke up at 3 am and then at 4 am just to go out on the front porch to call Sparky. I waited until 4:30 am to get up, get dressed and go down to the area where the horses heard the commotion the night before.
I found his body, stiff and lifeless about 100 feet from the barn in a wooded pasture. Two puncture wounds the size of a pencil in his body. Their location indicated that he had been stabbed from above. Very little blood so he did not suffer long.
From what I could put together, he was gored by a deer. That yip I had heard the night before was probably his last yelp. Deer have been traveling through that part of pasture every few days but usually it was a herd of does that make up the herd. Apparently a buck may have been looking for those does and was traveling that same path last night. My little Sparky was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To help me though this time of sorrow I will try my darnest to remember those good times with him and not try to relive the last few hours of his life and me finding him, over and over again.
Rest in peace little one. There will never be another dog like you.
