Arby

Arby was 11 years old when I drove over to Petersburg to pull him from the shelter back in January, 2020. His lifelong companion was an older man who had recently died. Arby ended up at the shelter. He was lucky that the shelter folks knew him and his former owner who had been chief of police in Petersburg prior to his retirement. They didn't want to see the old dog at the shelter so they contacted some rescue groups in an effort to get him out. Those efforts reached me and I hopped in the van and went to Petersburg.

When I got there I realized that Arby was smaller than I had expected based on his description as a shepherd mix. But he was scared and needed out and I wasn't going to hold that against him. I brought him home and he slipped into the routine around here very easily although it was a much more active household than he had been used to. 

I had forgotten this until looking back through old blog posts today, but I took Arby out on some short hikes in that first spring that we had him. Mostly we just let Arby do what he wanted to do. His favorite thing was to sit in the front room with Clay in front of the television, which I'm sure was what he did a lot of with his former owner. Arby didn't really play with or interact with the other dogs, but he was always in the mix, often underfoot, even when it would have been smarter of him to wait until the younger and bigger dogs were out of the way. He certainly wasn't intimidated by by them and everyone walked around, or over, Arby when he was moving slower than everyone else. 

He's been slowing down a lot in the past six months, and slowing losing a lot of weight. There were a couple days last week when he wasn't bearing weight on one of his back legs for a while after he'd first get up. He's been unable to keep food down for several days and then just lost interest in eating altogether. I made the decision today to let him go. I hope that instead of waiting at the bridge for me or Clay, he goes trotting on across and meets up with his former owner who went ahead of him. I'd like to think of Arby sitting with his person in that big recliner undisturbed. 

This is probably the happiest picture of Arby I've got.

 It was taken after a hike with Maya and Trooper early in 2020.

This was when I pulled him from the shelter. 

He was one scared little dog there.

He enjoyed our walks in late winter and early spring, 

but I'm sure I stopped taking him when it got hot.

This was Arby today and I can see how far he had declined compared to the 

earlier pictures less than two years ago.