My name is Buster

My name is Buster.  I am a Cocker Spaniel and I am ten and a half years old.  Now I live in this really cool place they call the Rainbow Bridge, but I used to live with my human family.  They really loved me a lot, and I loved them.

When I was born into what Mommy called a “litter,” I was the smallest of all my brothers and sisters.  Mommy said I was the runt.  I was smaller than my sister, Zoe, for a very long time, but when I was around two, my legs got long and I gained weight, and I was finally bigger than Zoe!  She still treated me like a baby and would call me a puppy.  But Mommy said that was ok, because I was the cutest puppy that ever lived.  I liked that.  She said that Zoe was the prettiest girl ever.  I laughed about that because I liked being cute and not pretty.

Mommy told me that they almost didn’t get me when they went to the breeder’s house to look at Dudley and Zoe.  They thought they only needed two dogs.  But Bekah held me while Mommy and Daddy were looking at the other dogs, and she fell in love with me.  The whole way home, Bekah begged for me.  When they got home, Daddy called the breeder and asked if they could have me, too.  I am so glad they did and so is Mommy.  She says her life would not be complete without me!

My favorite human was Mommy.  She fed me and rubbed my belly and brushed me and kissed me and pinched my cheeks.  She would whisper to me that I was her favorite and not to tell the others.  The ‘others’ she was talking about were my biological daddy, Dudley, my biological sister, Zoe, and my nephew, Ziggy.  Dudley and Zoe are Cocker Spaniels like me.  We came from the same doggy family.  Ziggy is a miniature Dachshund and used to be my human brother’s dog, until David moved away and then Ziggy came to live with us. 

Life was pretty fun when we came to live with our human family:  Mommy, Daddy, David, and Bekah.  Zoe and I would run and chase each other all over the house and yard.  Mommy said our growling sounded like a lawn mower.  Funny.  Dudley was a very fast runner.  He would run up the hill and all around the yard.  Mommy loved to watch him do that.  But it didn’t last long, because Mommy and Daddy decided to get a swimming pool.  I had no idea what that was, but big machines came and dug a huge bowl in the ground!  We couldn’t go in the yard by ourselves anymore because Mommy was afraid we would fall in the hole; but Dudley, Zoe and I would sit by the patio door and bark loudly at the men and the machines.  That was a lot of fun, but I missed playing in the yard with Zoe and Dudley.  One day, the swimming pool was finished and Mommy took us out to see it.  It was a giant water dish!  I couldn’t believe it!  I looked at Mommy and thanked her by licking her leg.  My favorite thing about this giant water dish was when Mommy would add more water.  I would run to the spot where the water came out and bite the water; then I would run around the pool a bunch of times and go bite the water again.  The front of me would get all wet, but I was very happy!  Boy were we surprised one day when our human family decided to get in our giant water dish to play!  How silly, we thought, but they did it all the time.  And they would even bring their friends over to play in our water dish.  Sometimes I didn’t like it and I would bark at the friends.  Zoe, Dudley and I had to learn to be very careful around the giant water dish.  Sometimes we fell in and, boy, that was a surprise!  Mommy watched us very carefully, though, and always seemed to be there to help us out of the water dish. 

When we were very little, our human sister, Bekah, would dress up Zoe and I in baby clothes and take pictures.  I would growl and pretend I didn’t like it, but it was fun.  Zoe really liked it.  I guess that’s because she’s a girl.  I liked having a human brother and sister.  They would play with me and cuddle with me.  But then they got very busy with school and even part-time jobs.  I never understood that.  I thought they should just play with me and Zoe and Dudley all the time!   But Mommy spent a lot of time with us, and so did Daddy, when he got home from work.  Sometimes Mommy would go away for a long time to visit Grandma and Papa and I really missed her.  No one seemed to understand me the way Mommy did.  I loved to sleep next to her in bed, but sometimes I would sleep under the cradle that David used to sleep in when he was a baby.  As I got older, it became my favorite place to sleep. 

Sometimes Mommy would play hide and seek with me.  She would go hide somewhere and then call my name.  When I found her we would laugh and cuddle.  I never told her that I could just follow her smell to find her.  Mommy and I did a lot together.   I loved my pink ball and Mommy would throw it down the hallway.  I would run after it and squeak it really loud and then Mommy would fetch it and throw it again.  That was great fun.  One day, my pink ball ripped in half and Mommy went to the store to buy another one.  She came home very sad and said there were no more pink ones anywhere.  I was very particular about the kind of ball I played with.  It had to squeak loudly and be sort of soft.  So Mommy kept looking and bringing home different balls, but none were just right.  Finally, one day she came home with a white ball that had colorful bone shapes all over it.  It was perfect!  I squeaked that ball as often and as loudly as I could; especially when Mommy was on the phone to Grandma, because it would make Grandma laugh.  Mommy went back to the store and bought two more balls just like my new favorite one.  I was so happy!

One day, David went away.  Mommy said he got ‘married’ and would live with his wife.  I didn’t think that was a good idea because I missed him, but he and his wife would come to visit a lot.  Then the worst happened!  They got a puppy named Ziggy.  They would bring Ziggy over for Mommy to babysit because they worked all day.  Mommy loved Ziggy a lot and held him and played with him.  I didn’t like that at all!  But Mommy still spent a lot of time with me and would still whisper to me that I was her favorite and tell me not to tell the others.  That made me happy.  Ziggy was annoying and barked a lot when he had to go in the crate.  When Mommy would let him out of the crate, I would chase him and growl.  Mommy would laugh because she knew I would never hurt him.  She said I was a lot like Papa; I liked everyone to think I was tough and mean, but I was just a sweet, soft teddy bear in my heart. 

Mommy loved to sing songs to us dogs as she did her work every day, and she talked to us all the time.  My favorite thing to do, when I got old, was to lie on the bed and wait for Mommy to come in the room.  She would come in and be so surprised and happy to see me and then come over to cuddle me and tell me how much she loved me.  At night, before she went to sleep, she would pat my tummy and say, “Good night puppy-boy.  I love you.  Sleep good.”  Then I would sigh loudly and we’d go to sleep. 

One day, Bekah left us.  Mommy said she was a big girl and moved to her own apartment.  She would come over a lot and play with me and Zoe and Dudley.   That made me so happy.  After a while she moved back to our house so she could save her money to buy a house.  I thought she was back forever, so I was really surprised when she left us again.  She didn’t visit as much, but we still got to see her once a week.  I really missed her, though.

David decided to move far away one day and asked if Mommy and Daddy would keep Ziggy for a while.  They said yes and Zoe and I were not happy!  He slept on the bed with us and ate our food and treats and took up a lot of Mommy’s and Daddy’s time.  Dudley liked him a lot, though, and talked us into tolerating Ziggy.  We learned to get along pretty well.  Ziggy still lives at our house. 

One day Daddy disappeared.  Mommy was worried a lot and would leave us all alone for a few hours every day.  She said she was going to the hospital to visit Daddy.  We didn’t know what that meant and we were so scared that Mommy would leave us, too!  After seventeen days, Mommy brought Daddy home; but he was different.  He was weak and slept a lot.   But he would still talk to us and pet us.  Eventually, he went back to work and I hoped everything would get back to normal again, but it didn’t.

I started feeling icky.  I stopped eating very much and had diarrhea; eventually, I stopped pooping.  Mommy was so busy helping Daddy get well that she didn’t notice I had lost a lot of weight and my tummy got big.  Then one day she did notice and she cried.  She took me to the vet, Dr. Jamie, who said that I was very sick.  She did an x-ray and made me lay on my back.  That made me really mad because I don’t even let Mommy roll me on my back!  Dr. Jamie also took some blood for testing.  Dr. Jamie said that it didn’t look good.  I didn’t know what she meant, but Mommy got scared.  They decided to do surgery the next day and Mommy took me home.  That night was really weird.  Mommy and Daddy laid on the floor with me and prayed to God about me.  They cried and talked to me and told me how much they loved me.

The next day I was miserable.  Mommy said she could see that I was in a lot of pain.  She had no idea that I was in more pain than she could imagine.  She took me to the vet again.  Boy I hated that place!  This time, mommy left me there.  I was scared, but Dr. Jamie is a very nice person and she loved me a lot, so I tried to be brave.  They laid me on a table and helped me to sleep while Dr. Jamie did surgery.  I couldn’t feel a thing.  I dreamed about cuddling with Mommy and eating my favorite treats.  I was happy. 

What I didn’t know was that as Dr. Jamie was doing the surgery, she found lots of very bad cancer in my belly.  That’s what was making me so sick and losing weight.  She called Mommy and told her that she could stitch me up and send me home, but I would be in more pain than we could imagine, or we could “let him go.”  Mommy sobbed.  She didn’t want me to suffer.  So she told Dr. Jamie to let me go and asked her to give me one last kiss for her.  Pretty soon, I woke up in this place called the Rainbow Bridge.  I was confused at first, because Mommy wasn’t there.  I looked for her everywhere.  Then this dog named Puff found me and explained where I was and what was going on.  Puff was Mommy’s dog a long time before I was even born.  He said that he and I, an another dog named Candy who was Mommy’s dog when Mommy was a little girl, would wait in this great place a have a lot of fun every day and have wonderful food to eat until Mommy gets old and dies.  Then she will meet us here and we will go to Heaven and be together forever!  I’m happy that I am in a really good place while I wait, but sometimes, I can hear Mommy crying because she misses me.  I miss her, too.  We were the best of friends and she said I was her protector.  I stayed by her side and we loved each other.  We can’t wait to be together again.