Callie

I had a healthy snack all planned and ready to post today, but sometimes life gets in the way and there’s more important things to talk about.

If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed some of the pictures I posted last night of Callie, one of our dogs.

Callie has been a loving and loyal member of our family since June 1999. We got her when I was just 12 years old after our first dog, Tatum, died of old age.

Callie was a mischievous puppy–hard to train, running away from home, and always getting her nose into something it shouldn’t be, like the neighbor’s week old garbage. In fact, one of my favorite Callie stories is when she got sprayed by a skunk (this was not a one time occurrence, by the way). It was a few months before I was scheduled to begin high school at a new school where I didn’t know anyone, and I was at visitation day.

Callie had been sprayed the night before, and even though my mom did everything she could to get the smell out right away, it’s just one of those lingering and unmistakable scents that permeates anything in its path. Anyway, during a tour of the school with some of my future classmates the next day, someone loudly exclaimed something along the lines of, “woah it really smells like a skunk. Yuck!” I was, undoubtedly, mortified, but no one figured out where to point the blame and on we went. A few years later, Callie got sprayed by a skunk the night before I went to prom with someone I had always had a crush on. Go figure.

Callie was a wild child who loved the scent of the outdoors and would go wherever her nose would take her, but she always came home. She was also famously very moody and would look you in the eye when you called her and blatantly turn her back and walk the other way. Sometimes it took a minute to remember she meant no harm by it–she loved us all and made the house a happy place, she just wanted to run around and sniff. One person she almost always came running to, however, was my mom. She especially loved my Mom, her “master.”

Callie died last night in peace in the company of my mom and dad after saying goodbye to my youngest brother, Matt, who is currently home from college.

In years past, Callie had many close calls–she survived cancer, Cushing’s Syndrome (which meant lots of medication and nightly shots), and more–but she was a brave, strong, and happy dog who lived for 13.5 long years. That’s 94.5 human years. The equivalent of 94.5 years of chicken dinners, squirrel chasing, doggie play dates, long walks, hugs, and human beds to sleep on equals a lot of happiness and comfort for one dog.

I’m so sad I didn’t get to say goodbye, but we got one last Christmas together–all eight of us (five humans and three dogs). Call me crazy, but I think she just might have been waiting for that.

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