music and it's impact

One of the blogs that I've been logging a whole lot of frequent flyer miles on had a post the other day on a piece of music that generated a whole lot of comments about places music takes you, intentional or not.  One song that really takes me to another place and time is George Strait's You'll Be There.  The subject of today's post is the Buddha, date is April 26, 2005. (no need to watch the vid. just listen)

I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Rottweillers are the diggenest SOBs that I've ever met.  Good on gopher population, hell on the landscape. Buddha discovered gophers when we moved home to Alberta (well home for me, not for the former-husband-unit; he was BC bred and born); there aren't any gophers in BC.  It was hilarious to watch the first introduction.  A gopher would see her and Harley and chirp (part of their warning system).  Of course this drew the attention of the dogs and off they'd go, chasing gophers only to have said gopher pop down his hole.  The Buddha would stand over the gopher hole waiting for it to come out and, what happened?  Another would pop up in a different location and off she'd go, thinking it was the same one.  Huh?  How'd you get over there? 
Over the next 4 years this was kind of a handy feature to have as she'd turn herself inside-out to get one.  Unfortunately for the gophers that she managed to capture, the outcome for them was never good.  Once she'd grabbed them they were pretty much done, and she'd lay beside their little carcasses like a cat, waiting for them to bolt or play. 
The spring of 2005 she'd discovered a new gopher hole in the yard and was doing some serious excavating on it to try to get to the little bugger when she broke one of her nails.  Doesn't sound very serios I know, but dogs' nails are fairly thick and very strong.  This one bent back right to the quick and was sticking up at a 45* angle.  All I could do was look at it.  I knew how much that had to hurt and wasn't even going to touch it.  She went to work on it (there's nothing more healing than a dog's lick, wonder why?) and finally got it off, leaving the nub of her naked toe.  She had been lame the whole time that the nail was tilted and I expected her to be to be sound right away after that but still wasn't a week after it came off so I took her to the vet.  After telling him what happened, he prescribed some antibiotics for her and off we went.  10 days later and still sore so I took her back again.  The first thing that the vet said to me was "Is that from an old injury?" to which I replied "What?".  "The shoulder, I'd like to x-ray it.".  I allowed as how she hadn't injured her shoulder as far as I could remember and he told me that he'd still like to x-ray it.  I was thinking 'it's her toe, not her shoulder, but I'll humor you.' and we made an appointment for her for first thing the next morning.  After calling in to let my boss know what was going on, I dropped her off first thing in the morning and waited.  The vet called me around noon and told me that she had osteosarcoma which is one of the most painful cancers around and that we could discuss options when I got there.  When I asked him if we would be doing it for her or for me he respnde that we'd be doing it for me.  I told him I'd be there in 15 minutes and I'm sure that he knew my decision by the tone of my voice before I got there.
When I got there he showed me the x-ray and told me that by the time a sarcoma shows up on an x-ray, it's pretty much already metastasized through the rest of the body and we did what we had to do.  I stayed with her through the whole thing and the vet's staff let me stay as long as I wanted to (they're pretty compassionate that way, which is always good).  When I had collected her collar and leash and went out and got in the truck Goerge Strait was on, You'll Be There.

I cried through most of the writing of this one, that's how much I miss her; she'd have done anything for me.
 Go with God Baby.