The doughnut of life

      Yesterday, October 21, 2010, will be one of those days I dont forget anytime soon. Woke early to get the kids to school and go to court as I had a child support hearing against my ex for failure to pay her child support. So I drove the half-hour drive to the courthouse, walk the half mile from the parking area to the courthouse, in my brace of course, and get settled in to wait. About 20 minutes later a clerk calls my name and tells me that they have canceled it since my ex had made payments the last two months. Im thinking " What about the year she didnt? " but dropped it and went home. Major disappointment.

      I got back home and got on the phone with my friend and mentor Steve Hawk and talked for a long time about whats going on in the business and what  Ive already done and I needed to do. I came away from this talk feeling happy and confident that I had gotten a good start. Major happiness.

      About 3pm i got a call from my mother asking if I could take her and her oldest dog Nikki to the vet. Nikki had been having a hard time walking the past few weeks and my mother was worried that she may need another surgery on her leg. At about 8pm last night we had Nikki put to sleep. Turns out the reason she was having a hard time walking was that she had a malignant tumor in her leg and in the past 2 weeks had spread to cover her entire leg and started to spread into her body. With her being two weeks short of 13 they didnt think she could survive amputating her leg AND still having to go through chemotherapy.

      I did not look forward to telling my kids that Nikki wasnt coming home. I walked out of the exam room and called my kids over and told them that they needed to tell Nikki goodbye. All three held it together until they got in the room with Nikki. My oldest daughter, who has said since she was 4 that she wanted to be a vet and still maintains idea that at 10 and is very passionate about animals, burst into hysterics and couldnt stop. She had literally learned to read books laying on the floor at my mothers laying her head on Nikki's stomach for a pillow. Nikki was a very large Husky and weighed in at about 90 pounds and was very gentle with the kids. As my daughter was crying on Nikki's shoulder, Nikki reached up a paw and laid it on her arm to comfort her. When my son went to hug Nikki, she reached out to lick his face and comfort him. When my youngest daughter reached down to pet her she put her big head on my daughter's leg and rubbed up against her leg. When I reached down to pet her and say goodbye, she laid her head in my hand and looked up at me with her big blue eyes and just looked at me for a minute.

       When we had finished our goodbyes we went out in the waiting room and waited. They wouldnt put her under until after my stepfather had gotten there. When my mother came out again, Nikki was gone. We lost one of our best companions and my kids lost a constant in their lives. Even after having both of  her rear knees replaced she loved to play with the kids and looked forward to their coming. As she was getting older she still tried to be a puppy and was always roughhousing with the kids or my mother's other dogs. She was a constant terror to all the squirrels and other small animals that came in my mother's yard. And she always was happy whenever I saw her, even to the last minutes of her life.

       I said something to a couple of friends last night when I finally got home and let them know what had happened. I wondered why we do it to ourselves by having pets knowing that we will almost always outlive them. One friend said " You cant stop loving and caring just because a person or a pet dies. You have to move on and love again. " I agree 100%. I'm sure we will have other animals and I'm sure that there will be other heartbreaks along the way. But I am also sure that I have never run across a dog like Nikki and probably never will again.

Nicolette ( Nikki ) Connor    November 11, 1997 - October 21, 2010