Mitzi, RIP

 This will be a sad post.

The day before yesterday I brought my little dog Mitzi to the vet for the last time. She had lymphoma. She died in my arms.

Mitzi was a rescue dog, a very deeply traumatized one. The organization that rescued her found her hiding under a truck in a Home Depot parking lot. She'd been dumped there. She was barely eight weeks old.

Mitzi was so terrified of people that when we first brought her home, we barely saw her.  She hid all the time. To feed her I had to put her food down and walk away and pretend I wasn't watching. Then she would "steal" her dinner.   It went on like this for a year.

She was a chihuahua mix, so she was tiny. You have to admire a dog that small who was so determined to survive.

It took years for her to become housebroken, and even then it wasn't a complete success. It took ages for her to learn to trust us. But in the last two years of her life, as a friend put it, she started acting "like a real dog," letting us know when she wanted to go out, knowing when her dinner time was and letting us know it, all that doggy stuff.

Strangers still scared her. At the sound of the doorbell she would go into full-on protective mode, barking and baring her teeth.  But she was always happy to see us, getting all excited when we came home, wagging her little tail and jumping up to be petted.

She was much loved and very loving in return. We will miss her.