Farewell Friends

If you’ve just met me in the last year or two you may not know about two very important friends of mine. Anyone who’s spent any time with me and my family during the last decade will testify to the two “kids” who always added an element of love and laughter to our lives.

I’m referring to our beloved Great Danes, Judge and Tess. Judge came as a package deal when I married Luke. To love Luke you must love Judge, so I did. He turned out to be my pal on the cold, Cleveland nights our rookie season and shortly after our marriage we decided Judge needed a friend. Enter Tess.

Tess earned the nickname Tess-a-Mess. It suited her well. Through the years these two drove us crazy, kept us company, made us laugh and even protected us from time to time. I remember one night when Judge trapped an unassuming frog. He sure let the frog know who was boss.

One time someone stole Luke’s truck right out of the driveway. The dogs alerted us with their barking … too bad we told them to hush then went back to bed. We thanked them in the morning when we realized why they had barked.

Our dear old Judge left us two years ago and, this morning, Tess joined him. So, as I reflect on these sweet dogs and all the good times we spent together I thought I’d share one of the most infamous of moments we had with them. Because to know me, you have to know at least a little bit about them …

The stage is Christmas Eve in Tampa, Florida, nine years ago (so we only had 1 kid).

The Buccaneers played in Cleveland, Ohio, Christmas Eve, and returned safely home around 9 p.m. I let Jonah stay up a little late to spend time with his Daddy Christmas Eve. Before we knew it, the clock read 10:30 p.m.

Once we finally nestled Jonah in for his long winter’s nap, we scurried to help Santa. We worked late into the evening setting up and leaving no trail behind us.

Finally, Luke and I dragged our feet towards the bedroom with our eyes half open. That’s when it happened.

The dogs were in our room fast asleep, so we thought. When we opened the door, we discovered another story. Tess, our female Great Dane, apparently came down with the Christmas Eve jitters which expressed itself in the form of an upset stomach.

We spent the next hour cleaning up the mess all over the carpet. Once we got it under control, we opened the windows and tried to sleep, but the Resolve fumes and lingering stench finally drove us to the guest bedroom.

Any reasonable adult would have put the dogs in the yard for the night. I don’t know if it was just so late we weren’t thinking, or maybe we subconsciously just gave up, but we let the dogs stay in our bedroom while we settled in for our not-so-long winter’s nap in the other room.

We paid for that decision.

Luke rolled out of bed Christmas morning, with his eyes all aglow (not really) and headed to our room to let the dogs out. He opened the door and stepped, barefoot, right into another pile of dog mess. It’s easier to laugh because it wasn’t me!

I’m happy to report, though, we did get the smell out and our day was not ruined.

Farewell good friends. We’ll never forget ya. Although when I told the kids the news today, our 7-year old said, “Now we really need to get a cat.” (See: The Rat in my House for the backstory on that.)

 

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