We said goodbye to Butch on Saturday. He had a good run — he survived Sundance, who we lost to brain lesions in February 2019, by more than a year. We adopted them in 2015, and gave them both the best we could. Dogs give you so much more, though.
Butch had been in decline for a while, and for the past couple of weeks we had been working hard to keep him eating. But eventually he would eat — and he could still navigate the dog door and the back steps — so we continued to seek out ways to tempt his appetite and keep him as strong as we could.
That morning, though, his breathing changed. Overnight he went from bouts of panting to constant panting, his old lungs and enlarged heart unable to move the oxygen he needed through his body. We knew.
We called the in-home vet, who was able to come just a few hours later. Butch got that chocolate ice cream he always thought we were denying him. We talked to Baguette and had her say goodbye, and when it was done, she told me what we had been telling her: He’s with Sundance.
So Parker has reunited with Longabaugh, as the last of the Wild Bunch rides off into the sunset.
