Alas, beloved Frankie is no longer with us. He passed just an hour or two into April 1, 2018 at the age of 13, the last 10 of which he was with me. I took him in as a rescue when he was roughly 3 years old in 2008. His original name was Guinness, which is a decent enough name, but I could never remember it when I needed to yell at him about something, so I changed it to Frankie, after Frank Sinatra — the original ol’ Blue Eyes — because of Frankie’s very light blue eyes.

In the middle of the night on or about July 1, 2017, Frankie suffered his first seizure. It was hugely traumatic to both of us: him, because he was all mixed up and wasn’t himself, behaving differently than he had his whole life and forgetting things he knew well; and me, because I had to watch him struggle so mightily with it all. Watching a loved one struggle and suffer like that is definitely the worst, hardest thing I’ve ever experienced. But by the end of July, Frankie had regained about 80% of his former self. We put it behind us and started to go back to normal, happy times.

Then, almost 6 months later to the day, he had another seizure in very early January of 2018. For the next 3 months, it was a nightmare. The seizures began to slowly increase in frequency, and as things rolled into February, I was living with the worst sort of terror hanging over me: that Frankie would have another seizure. They were unbearable to witness, and then trying to nurse him back to some sort of normalcy could take many hours at any time of the day or night, usually starting at night and continuing on well into the next day. Often it took a day or two of constant watchfulness to help him recover. Maybe the worst part was he had no idea why or what was happening to him. The vet could find nothing in his blood tests or his ultrasounds or x-rays. They often mentioned the possibility of a brain tumor, but they said the only way to know if it was a brain tumor was to do an MRI, which is prohibitively expensive. And even then, there are only two outcomes: you know he doesn’t have a brain tumor; or you know he does. If he does, the treatment options for a 13 year old dog have an extremely low probability of giving him any kind of respite, but most like would have resulted in even greater suffering and an even earlier demise.

Now, roughly 4 months after his passing, I’ve reached a state of recovery such that I can write about this, and do other related things, like go through the 4,000 pictures I’ve taken of Frankie over the years and clean them out and organize them a little bit. I even created an account on costcophotocenter.com and had a couple prints made. That’s progress people! Here are a few of my favorites:

Frankie Photo Gallery

What a funny dog my Frankie is.

The other day, we got attacked by these two racoons. Lots of fur flying, weird animal sounds, me trying fruitlessly to kick the larger racoon, etc. Lots of unwanted (for me) drama at the end of a nice walk just yards from our gate.

So yesterday, two+ weeks later, Frankie and I were at the pet store buying him food and whatnot, and I see this adorable fuzzy racoon toy. When you squeeze (bite) its tail, it squeaks, and when you squeeze (bite) its mid-section, it goes “wonk.” He’s gonna love it, right?

So, I introduce it to him when we get back home, and he plays with it a bit; seems a tad surprised that it wonks sometimes and squeaks other times, but then doesn’t show much interest after that.

Later that night, as usual, he’s asleep in the front yard while I hack on the computer or watch hulu in the living room in the back of the house. So ungrateful. Anyway, he shows up after a couple of hours at the open door of the living room that leads out onto the back deck. I notice his nose is very dirty. Hey, I asked him if he’d been digging, but like a typical teenager, OK, in dog years technically he’s 21, he refused to answer.

This afternoon, while hacking out on the front porch, I realize I don’t see the racoon anywhere. I start looking for it. I can’t find it. Then, I discover this:

Yup. The silly git buried the cute little fuzzy racoon toy!