a little over eight years ago at an adoption event i fell in love with this guy at first sight...
it didn’t matter that we were at the event to hopefully find homes for two of our fosters, i did not possess the ability to walk away from that face. watson (as he would later be named) at the time was about 3 months old and was up for adoption along with his sister and brother after having been rescued by a woman from a man who was going to “take them down to the river and shoot them." that day watson went home with us, his sister went home with her new family and the brother went back to the rescue. that night in what would prove to be oft-quoted i said to dave “i feel real bad about that brother” and the next day we went and got him and the dynamic duo of fletcher & watson was born.
it’s hard to talk about watson without talking about fletcher. we referred to them as our perpetual puppies because they just never lost that zest for life and love. for brothers they were so oddly similar; so loving, so goofy and so amicable yet they had just the right amount of bite to let others know not to mess with them. they were generally together, protective of each other but also neither unwilling to beat the piss out of the other. they were also a horrible two dog chain gang taking it upon themselves to protect us and our property from anything they deemed foreign. we learned the hard way on an outing with the two of them years ago that we couldn’t take them out together; together they acted like horrible, vicious beings that growled and lunged at anything and everything, yet separately they were their usual lovely selves.
one saturday morning at the beginning of september watson wasn’t feeling well and in what we hoped was an overprotective measure i took him to the vet. an ultrasound revealed his spleen had ruptured and he would need emergency surgery. less than 24 hours later our vet called and said “you can come get watson – he doesn’t want to be here” (on a sunday no less - i believe i’ve mentioned before how amazing our vet is). we picked him up and brought him home and we hoped for a full recovery. we hoped the histology results would show a hemangioma. we hoped when dr. singleton called a week later with the results....we hoped until we heard the words “hemangiosarcoma” and our hearts fell and fell further when she said “two weeks to two months.”
watson day after splenectomy
we did a bunch of research and started a regimen that we hoped would give wats the best chance possible. all the while watson, in all his watson-ness, acted like, well, watson. he recovered from his splenectomy like nothing had happened and he just went on with life. if he felt any pain he never let on and we had full-on wats for almost 3 months. yesterday morning we walked and he played like always but yesterday afternoon he collapsed and a short time later dave, watson, fletcher and i got in the car and took the dreaded drive to the vet. we told him we loved him, we told him he would have a huge welcoming committee, we told him goodbye and we let him go. then the three of us went home…alone.
watson was a loving, strong, loyal and goofy yet slightly reserved character. he was my kitchen witch and i think it’s when i’m in the kitchen that i’ll miss him the most. one thing i’ve learned with past experience is that the sadness will fade but the laughter and the love and the memories will be with me forever…but for now the sadness wins.