Saying goodbye to Buddy

On January 12, 2023, our family said a final farewell to our beloved Buddy. Some may say, “He was just a dog”, but Buddy was a very special dog not only for our family but many of those that got to meet him.

As our daughter, Abby, put it, “Buddy was a dog for people who don’t like dogs!” In our family, he was the first dog that Sara really loved, the first dog that she ever allowed inside and for Sierra and Mat, was the dog that made them to like dogs again. If we could have, we would have probably cloned him because of his truly unique personality.

We rescued him on February 25, 2016 thinking we were going to pick up a yellow lab. What we found was one of the largest dogs that any of us had ever been around. He was severely emaciated but still weighed in at over 100 lbs. Once we nursed him back to health, he weighed in at 135 lbs. Even at 135 lbs though, he was the gentlest of giants always caring for little kids and kittens.

Because of his size, our vet always reminded us that his life expectancy would be around 10 years. Though still healthy, on January 10, 2023 when he was coming to bed, he burst a disc in his spine that paralyzed his back legs, bowels and bladder–he was 11 in our estimation–so we had to make the difficult decision to let him go.

When we adopted him, we were trying to decide whether to name him Buddy or Happy because he was always smiling and content. We soon learned that his name already had been Buddy, but as you can see from pictures of him below, he always had a smile on his face!