It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that Penny and I let you all know that we lost our sweet little Olive on Monday. It was sudden, shocking and we are both so, so upset. 

I’d brought her in to see the vet for a seemingly simple procedure to have an abscess on her ear drained. She went into cardiac arrest under sedation (not general anesthetic) and never woke up. 

Most of you know that our dogs are family to us, and we unapologetically spoil and love them like crazy. This was a tremendous blow that will take some time from which to recover.

Olive was born in a puppy mill in the Ukraine on February 5, 2005. She was brought to the USA and sold to a person who gave her up to the French Bulldog Rescue Network because she, “couldn’t afford to give her a facelift.” That’s a true, although inexplicable, story.

We were so lucky the day we picked up Olive from a French Bulldog Rescue Network foster home in Pueblo, Colorado on May 19, 2007. We all fell in love with her on the ride home. When we got to our house in Denver and let both Cosmo and Olive run around the house she immediately mounted him. That pretty much set the tone for the next 10 years- Olive was always the boss.

Olive lived to keep her mommy and daddy happy. She was such a sweet girl who loved to wrestle before bedtime, go on long walks (she was always in “guard” mode), play with her stuffed toys, and EAT! She loved food, just like her papa.

She was slowing down a bit in her later years, but she never thought so. In her mind she was always 10 feet tall and strong as an ox, right up until the end. She enjoyed life on the farm after our move to Missouri last year and liked chasing rabbits and walking the fields. We buried her in the yard at the farm, just a few steps away from the house. We miss her so, so terribly.

We were all so lucky to have found each other. The life she might have had without us would probably been much different, and ours as well. Olive improved and enriched our lives in so many ways, and our rescuing, loving and having her as our sweet companion and family member certainly did the same for her. 

A friend of mine who coincidentally lost his dog on the same day wrote, “George Carlin said it best…’You should know it in the pet shop. You are purchasing a small tragedy.’” I get this. The loss is staggering when you bring a pet so close to your life. But amidst all this sadness we will cherish the happy memories we had with our sweet little girl. The shock and misery will hopefully fade, but the happiness- never.

To paraphrase Kurt Luedtke, “She brought us joy, and we loved her well.”

Goodbye, sweet girl.