It is with a heavy heart that we write this blog entry. Monique, our 16+ year old toy poodle passed away on June 1, 2009. As happens with very old dogs - and as our vet so wisely observed - “Monique outlived her body.”
As anyone who has lost a pet understands, it takes a while to be able to write about these things.
In the final year of her life, Monique was completely blind and deaf. We learned to cope with these challenges. What was more troubling, though, was the fact that she lost half of her body weight in that time. In the past few months, she began to show neurological problems which our vet likened to dementia in people. Despite the challenges, we kept Monique going and gave her the best quality of life we could since last October. Let’s just say we did a lot of laundry and gave a lot of baths in that time. At the very end, Monique showed little interest in eating and we knew it was time to say good-bye.
Monique was the foundation dam (mother dog) for most of the puppies we produced when we were breeding toy poodles. Monique’s pups, including Sean Patrick Rafferty of The Irish Boys’ fame, continue to thrive. We are fortunate, through Caprice and Mr. Dibs, her grandpuppies, to have Monique with us still.
Monique was individually cremated by Final Gift, a wonderful pet cremation service in Rhode Island. We give them our wholehearted endorsement for professionalism and kindness. Monique’s remains were returned to us in a beautiful wooden urn with a Certificate of Individual Cremation and a warm and sincere sympathy card.
Monique is buried in our pet cemetery with her sister Yevonna, her stillborn puppy Patrick, and with other pets who’ve owned us during the past 20 years.
Monique, we’ll be with you again someday at the Rainbow Bridge. Rest in peace.
Until next time,
Mr. Dibs the Grandpuppy
