She was twelve or thirteen years old, a good big sweet Bluetick coonhound, stubborn, too. A good mama, and a good companion to Esme as well through most of her life. You can see above the day they first met.. Esme wasn't very big at all. She passed of natural causes, on the first really warm day of Spring, 78 degrees.. curled up in leaves after a long hard cold winter. Five years ago we were afraid we would lose her, when a neighbor ran her over with their car, breaking a leg, damaging one of her eyes and making her lose so much blood. But, she pulled through.
These past few winters I had tried to feed her up whenever she would get thin - that seemed to go in cycles, she'd be good and then she'd have a few bad weeks. She just wasn't digesting her food as well anymore because she was old - but putting some milk or gravy on it helped a lot and she even came to expect that before bed at night. This morning Mark said she went out with all the rest in the morning. I went to town for a bit.. and while we were beginning to make supper her daughter Sweetie made a motion to Mark when he went out in the yard that something was wrong - and he found her. Esme was sad and didn't want to believe it.
She was the mother of Sweetie, Daphne, Spud and Minerva.. grandmother of Lucy and Freckles. Mark says she had sort of been a mother to Melody, the blind goat, as well - and that she also knows something is wrong today. Both of the little Manx kittens, Loki and Lyffan went to see her when we found her.. and Minion cat came and got in my lap at my computer desk after we came back in from outside.
