Jewel's Gone

Hi everyone, I just wanted to tell you that my golden retriever died today.

We will all miss her. I remember before we bought her, we talked about whether we should get another dog for a while because our previous dog had died quite few years before that. Eventually we called & found a place nearby where there were golden retriever puppies for sale.

So off we all went to look at all the pups. When I first saw the Mom, she was so proper and beautiful. She was just sitting there all astute and regal looking. Why I actually chose Jewel was because of the demeanour of the mom. I thought wow I would like a pup like that!

The father of the brood was this handsome rugged beauty named Simba. He was just lovely too. He bounded across the yard in search of a long stick that he could quickly bring and deposit at our feet for a game of toss and fetch. He captured our hearts as well. He followed us everywhere we went around the property and eventually deposited himself with a huge thump at our feet while we talked to the owners. That wasn't the first thump we heard. There were several other 'thumps' as his huge tail swept across the floor and thumped up and down in joy to be right there amongst us.
Looking at the brood there were only two females remaining and we quickly decided on one (Jewel). She was only a few weeks old but she would be all ours by the time she was eight weeks old.

How long those eight weeks were! We kept watching the calendar in delight watching the days and weeks slowly pass by. WE kept laughing at the stories of Simba and how his tail was so big and noisy with all those thumps. We imagined Jewel being like her mom with a little bit of her dad thrown in & the anticipation was oh so great. When the day arrived to pick her up off the kids went with Ian to retrieve her, taking with them an old hockey coat of Ian's (to wrap her in) as well as a squeaky toy of some sort (I think it was a stuffed animal actually to carry the scent of the mom with Jewel.) Before long they had returned to the house with this beautiful pup all wrapped up in this great big coat with great big smiles on there faces, ear to ear. Every moment was spent loving her.



The terrors of having a pup as well as delights unfolded within the next several weeks. Delights such as dressing her up as a ballerina even. Back and forth to the adjacent field trying to train her (she quickly caught on). Before long we had purchased many items. I remember how she used to cry at night, the only way she would stop was to curl up on top of my husband's feet.

She turned into a real princess just like her mother. She had the same regal demeanour all the time and soon became properly behaved. As the years went by she began to grey a bit. One of the highlights of owning her was when our neighbors moved in and much to our delight they had a beautiful breeding stud named FALCO. He was also handsome and very big, a white retriever. It was always in our mind to 'introduce' him to Jewel because of course we wanted Jewel to have pups. Jewel was so regal and Falco was such a stud LOL. So finally the topic came up casually and much to our delight our neighbors were equally excited at the prospect of Jewel & Falco 'meeting' and having some babies.

Well it took a few visits before things happened, but within weeks we have on our hands seven golden retriever puppies. They were as you can imagine more delightful than any kid could hope for (or parents). Jewel decided to have the puppies very quickly and without any sort of problems. She was the mom we all knew she would be. She nursed them all fine with one pup we named Fatty who completely seemed to grow the quickest! Hours and hours were spent sitting in lawn chairs gazing at the pup's, watching them nurse, then fat bellies so hard to carry on such short legs, almost touching the ground, bums swaying back and forth! Visitors, family, everyone came to contribute to the oohing and awwing of watching them in tug or wars and rip roaring fights amongst the siblings. (Who would win? ) It was more fun than kid's hearts could hold back then.

As they grew, Jewel grew tired of the constant nursing and began to wean them, but they would follow her in circles as she denied them her milk. In came the bags of puppy chow as we mushed it all up and encouraged them to go for the other food. We eventually sold all the pups with Fatty hanging around the longest due to his size and parting with him was hard and tears were shed but the new owner promised we could visit, and sent pictures and stories of what a great family pet her turned out to be.

We kept one pup, named Diamond, who bounced around her Mom and kept her Mom on her toes and eventually often annoyed with her behaviour. So now Jewel is gone and we have all these great memories as a family of loving her and being so excited for having her, seeing her pups born. We will all miss her so much. It's especially hard for my daughter in university in Hamilton as she never got to really say goodbye to Jewel.