good-bye to a friend

We met Shay back when we were kids.  My heavens, all three of us look young.  This was taken the week we moved to Haiti, over 5 years ago.

When we moved to Saccanville in 2009, we kind of inherited Shay as the Seminary compound watchdog.  Lily loved her from the start.

In Haiti, Shay will always be best known as "the red dog that killed a cow" based on the story from who-knows-when when Shay (and another dog) took down and killed a cow (a baby cow).  Over the years, the story has grown, and even though Shay is now almost blind, completely deaf, and almost completely lame, people in Saccanville are still scared of the mysterious cow-killer.  

 Lily tells Shay all of her secrets and shares all of her chicken bones and crackers with her.

...and until the last few months, loved to ride her.

However, when we came back from Sofie's birth this year, Shay (now some 13-15 years old) wasn't doing so well.  Her arthritis has grown increasingly bad, and today, she cannot stand, and if you help her stand up, she cannot sit back down.  She eats while laying down on her side, she's lost an incredible amount of weight no matter how much food we give her, and can't see or hear.  

We've been feeling terribly for her for a long time now, and for the last month or two have been looking for a very humane way to put her down as two people that can't even smack a rat, and as a family that loves Shay.  The last few weeks we've been praying for a good solution, and a doctor was finally able to help us with an overdose that should just slow her heart until it stops.  

While the entire concept of loving and caring for an animal, much less a dog, is very foreign here, we, and a lot of other people throughout the years, have loved Shay!  Putting her down, and even worse, having to put her down ourselves, is not going to be easy...but we have no doubt that it's the right thing to do.  Just wanted to let everyone who knows Shay know!

 Lily's going to miss her :(