Ozz Wozz

I never figured I would ever become an animal person. Especially a dog person. Especially a person who loved her doggie so much she would blog about him.

We had to put our lovey weird dog Ozzie down last week. He had what I like to call Dr.Jekyll/Mr. Hyde syndrome. Most of the time he was a sweet tempered, friendly, galloping doofus of a dog. However, when people came over to our house that he didn't know or didn't remember that he knew, he would bite them.

It started out innocently enough; Whenever he got loose as a baby dog, he used to just chase people around in a playful puppy way before we could corral him inside. Then, as a teenager dog, he started to nip at people's pants while he chased them - and finally, over the last year or so, he began biting those he chased. Hard.

I had no idea how attached to him I was. I mourned. Like, literally. Stayed in my bed all day long the day afterwards and read Harry Potter and played on my laptop. All day.

I feel comforted by the fact that we did everything we could to solve the problem before putting him down. We tried: obedience school, puppy prozac, a permanent baby gate separating the downstairs from the front door so he couldn't get outside or bite our guests, getting a special harness for walks that he couldn't slip out of, walking him in the dead of night so we wouldn't endanger the neighborhood, etc.

In the words of 'Doctah' Moss (our Australian - or is he British? - veterinarian) while he spoke with us in his office the day we had to put Ozz to sleep, "We know your family. We know you love your animals."

We really do.

Ozzie went very peacefully. He was comfortable and quite happy and we petted him until he was gone.

To stop myself from having a full-blown blogging cryfest, here are some pictures of one of his favorite pastimes: photobombing our family pictures.