The Drought is Over, and Goodbye Angel Belle

Some bloggers take the summer off from blogging and I guess most of you think I did the same. Truth be told I never really intended to take most of the summer off from this blog but things sort of happened to cause this to occur.

Just as Tropical Storm Isaac, then Hurricane Isaac and once again Tropical Storm Isaac helped end the drought in the midwest (way too late for the farmers) I'm hoping this post will end the drought of blog post for the Brese Plane blog.

So this is what happened.

Julie and I attended a family wedding in Florida and we decided to extend our stay in Daytona. I've never been to a place where cars were permitted on the beach. I have to admit the tradition at Daytona creates an interesting view when you look down the beach and cars are parked as far as you can see.

( I know there's supposed to be a picture here of a beach with cars but of course we forgot the camera)

When we returned from our beach trip we jumped into preparation mode for a visit from the little guy in the picture below. This was our first time keeping our grandson for a week sans parents. His parents dropped him off and headed for some fun in Savannah. It's been a long time since we were the responsible parties for a 2 year old in our house. We quickly learned it was a wise thing to take a nap whenever he did.

When Everett and his parents had returned home we fell right back into our work schedule and my focus was purely set on producing planes which I immediately set about doing. Things were going well and I was making some real progress on several tools which was also spawning some ideas for blog post. Just when I thought I was ready to settle back into regularly posting to my blog something occurred that I could never have foreseen.

I was painting some garden furniture out behind the garden house on a Saturday morning. Angel Belle was making her rounds in order to account for the whereabouts of everyone. This is her job and she takes it seriously even though she goes about it with a rather jovial attitude wagging her tail as she goes about her duties. As usual when she found me it required a greeting that included a neck rub and profuse petting. As I was rubbing my hand down her side I felt a firm mass just behind her right front leg that I immediately knew  was not a good thing.

A trip to the vet the following Monday confirmed my worst fears. By Monday the mass had grown noticeably and the vet informed me that it would continue to do just that. Angel Belle was 13 years old and surgery was not really an option for a dog her age. The vet sent us home with pain medication and his cell phone number.

I spent all my spare time during the next three weeks just being with Angel Belle. She had been a remarkable friend and companion and the most fun of any canine that has shared our home. There have been many but she was that once in a life time dog for me.

Over the next couple of weeks the mass continued to grow and she was quickly losing the use of her right front leg and laying down was becoming quite a painful ordeal. She would literally stand for hours at a time in lieu of laying down. I sensed she was about to lapse into a period of real suffering and I just could not allow that to happen. A scant three weeks after I discovered the mass she was gone.

That was about a month ago and her absence still looms quite large around here. Maybe I'm revealing a bit too much about myself but frankly this shook me to the core of my being. You may have noticed I never referred to her as "my dog". I rescued her when she was 9 months old, she had already bore a litter of puppies and was in the worst possible shape you could imagine. She had good breeding in her favor and with a new home where she was cared for and loved she blossomed into the dog she always had the potential to be.

You see it was more like "I was her person",

Ron