Goodbye and Farewell to Zelda The Wonder Dog

Unfortunately I have some really sad news to share, Zelda the Wonder Dog died last night.

We got her in September 2003, at the Santa Cruz SPCA, so we had her for eight good years.  She's only the second dog our family has ever had.  We were looking for a small to medium sized dog, but when I saw her in her pen, she gave me this look and I swear I heard her say in my head "just please, can you get them to let me out just for a little bit, you don't have to take me home, I swear, I just need to get out of here."  She was the only calm dog in the place, all the other ones were flipping out and jumping and barking at us.  She just stood there looking at us so patiently, and hopefully, so we did, we got the SPCA helper to come over and let her out so we could play with her outside.  She was so happy just to be out.  And we all laughed so hard when she dug in the big water bowl like a lunatic and splashed it all over.  She just had this big, ebullient personality that you couldn't ignore.  So she changed our minds in that instant and she was ours and we were hers.

She named herself, when we were filling out the paperwork, and I was asked what we'd like to put down as her name, she looked up at me and I swear I heard "you can call me Zelda." Which I scoffed at because then everyone would think we'd named her after the video game character, but no, she really wasn't, I always maintain, she named herself.

Zelda loved the water, unless it was being sprayed at her out of the hose.  But she took over the kid's old wading pool as her own, and would jump in and out of it during the hot summers, digging, always digging in the water.  She really loved swimming in the river, always trying so hard to finally catch one of the ducks.  She didn't like fetching sticks all that much, I don't think she saw the point in it, she would just take them and chew them to pieces, but she did like chasing balls.  But you had to make sure to take it away from her or she'd completely destroy it.  She practically raised our youngest cat, Spike, we called them the dynamic duo.  They were always going in and out of the house together, following each other around, sleeping with each other.  Spike's going to really miss her.

We don't know how old she really was, last year the vet told me he thought she was probably 15 years old at least.  So we knew she wouldn't be with us much longer, her breathing problems were getting worse and worse, so I'm happy for her that she passed away as easily as she did.  My son Alex and I were with her as she took her last breath, so she wasn't alone in her final time. I'm just glad we got to have so long with her in our lives.  She was a truly special dog that I don't think I'll ever stop missing.