We decided to give him 'one last good day'. Took him to Dairy Queen for an ice cream and patty, then a walk at one of the parks nearby. It had a waterfall and a place to swim. He enjoyed it, but the walk itself was short, so we stopped at a small beach on the way home. All the beaches around here are very flat, so during low tide (which it was) you can walk out quite far. Now usually we don't ever let him off leash because he's such a handful, but it was his last day and the place is pretty secluded. Can't get in that much trouble.
The first stupid thing he did was drink a bunch of seawater from the puddles. I didn't want to get my shoes wet, so I was throwing shells at him trying to get him to stop. Eventually I gave up. He was gonna be dead in a couple hours anyway. We continued on and he spottted some gulls near the water. Of course, he went after them. It was sweet seeing him do what he loves best on his last day and he was even running in the water after them. Except, he kept running, then swimming, and as he went further out we started to realize he wasn't gonna come back. We were calling him and he either couldn't hear us or didn't care, so I ran after him. By the time I reached the water he was practically a little dot in the ocean. It took me a while to get to him, being all weighed down by wet clothes, and he only turned around when he realized I was close enough to grab him. I kinda thought he might die on the way back and I'd have to float his body to shore lol, but we made it. The rest of my family was filming and laughing. He always did stupid things like that, so it was nice that he gave us one last story to tell.
Later on, we had brought the other pets out to smell his body at the funeral. They didn't seem to get it, either that or they didn't care, but we wanted them to know that he hadn't just disappeared. Actually, while we were burying him our other dog didn't even want to look. Maybe she thought she was next? When we were done, one of the cats started digging at the fresh dirt and we thought he was trying to dig his friend out, but then he squatted and took a huge shit. We like to think it was a donation to the after life. Our dog was very fond of kitty rocca.
Just thought I'd share this. He definitely made an otherwise sad day fun and memorable :)
