Midnight passed, had to put him down

Goodbye buddy.

11/7/10 Sunday
Yesterday I got a call from the vet. It was a sad call and I could hear it in her voice right away. She told me that Midnight had made a turn for the worse overnight and his kidneys had completely shut down. She had had so much hope for him even though she knew he was touch and go. It was evident that Midnight had been poisoned, by what she couldn’t say for sure. She brought up the possibility that it was defoliant right away, mentioning that some dogs are sensitive to it and absorb it through their skin. We did have that spray plane make two passes over our land and today I find clear evidence of defoliant on some of our crops and really bad on the watermelon plant. I don’t use rat poison specifically because of the possibility our dogs could eat a poisoned rat so we’re real careful about that.
This picture is evidence of some of the damage from defoliant that blew onto our property from the areal spraying next door.

The vet asked if I wanted her to put Midnight down of if I wanted to take care of it myself. I said “That depends on the cost” presuming that she would charge, but when she said she wouldn’t charge for that I was glad. I don’t have it in me to put Midnight down and we just buried Ben and Gretchen so wasn’t anxious to do that either. She will send us the bill for the two days she had Midnight. I’d called to see when I should come by and pick it up and she said she’d mail it. That will give us some time to come up with the funds so will help a lot.

That makes three dogs in a matter of weeks. Cherie said that if someone drops off another stray she didn’t want to keep it, and I quite understand. But we need an outside dog or two to protect this house and farm. Part of me wonders if someone did this on purpose. First Ben and Gretchen get shot and now Midnight is poisoned. But that’s probably just being a little paranoid. I’ll have to trust in the Lord to protect us, but I do anyway.

So it was a sad day and still is today. At least we hadn’t bonded with Midnight as close as we had with Ben and Gretchen. Odds are Midnight wasn’t too healthy when we got him in the first place. He never had the energy level you’d expect from a puppy, the vet said he was about seven months old, and he wasn’t too swift in other areas either. But that was ok, we loved him the way he was.

What next? Life goes on and as always, we do the best we can with what we have. The belief that “Everything happens for a purpose” just raises the question “What purpose?”. Who knows, I sure don’t, but sometimes these things become clearer in time so no sense getting all worried about it.