SAVVY JO

Savvy Jo died today. She got out of bed sometime during the night and she fell. I found her on the concrete floor this morning. I gathered her up and put her back in her bed. She was unable to stand and unable to walk. She also was unable to drink. I wrapped her up in a blanket and lay with her for a while holding her close. She was still alert and aware enough that she liked that a lot. She was unable to drink so I gave her water through a large syringe the VET gave us for administering liquid medicines. She clearly was in a great deal of trouble so I called the VET for an appointment. I ran the car for some time with the AC running and then loaded her in the front seat after the car had gotten cool. As I drove to the VET, I kept my right hand over on her side and talked softly to her. She died shortly before we got to the VET. I knew she had died because my hand could not feel the rise and fall of her breathing anymore.

I am heartbroken. I loved her so very much. She had been with us since June, 1993. The River Patrol had found Savvy Jo and Jake on a concrete stoop with the Mississippi River lapping the top of their stoop. Their mother and other siblings floated dead in the Mississippi nearby. It was the 1993 flood. The shelter brought them to Alton State Hospital on Friday for the patients to see. They were both scheduled for death on Monday. I adopted them on Saturday. Four days later they both developed Parvo.

My VET and the Emergency Vet Hospital managed to get them through Parvo. It was touch and go for many days. Two weeks later, I took them home from their inpatient stay in the hospital. I remember the discharge instructions were to feed them bland non fatty foods. I took them home and that very day they found a can of mixed nuts (mainly cashews) chewed through the top and ate the whole can. And their 17 years with me began. She hated baths and I think it had to do with that experience on the stoop with the Mississippi River lapping at her feet. I remember one hot summer afternoon, Rhonda and I attempting to bathe her in the back yard. She escaped in "full bubble" and went running wildly down the cul de sac in front of the house with bubbles flying off her in a jet stream as Rhonda and I gave chase. It looked like a scene from a cartoon. The neighbors stood in front of their houses laughing at the scene.

We used to go to Evansville quite often to visit my father in the last years of his life. There's a Dairy Queen along the highway and I would always stop at that DQ and buy each of them a "baby cone". Both of them could recognize a DQ sign from quite a distance. When I moved to Appalachia for a year, they accompanied me. The trip down, they rode in the front seat of my tiny yellow Metro which was on a trailer behind the UHaul. I think both of them stood on their back legs the whole trip with their front paws on the dashboard checking out the Kentucky stallions and fillies in the fields. In these last few months, she became known as the Beagle Burrito because of her love of being swaddled and cuddled in a blanket.

I loved them both beyond all reason and measure and they returned that love a million times over. They loved us so much it was beyond any known measurement. I did not love one more than the other, but the grief of giving up the last one is overwhelming.