Patch was Justin's dog. Justin got him when he was 16 as a reward for good behavior and good grades. Patch was a half black lab/half chow mix. Patch was one of the best dogs. He was great with all of Justin's nieces and nephews, would even let them ride him around when they were little. He was an amazing guard dog (even though he bit the UPS guy, around Christmas). I became very close to Patch this last summer while I lived at Justin's parents house (where Patch lived). He became my dog, I cared for him as if he had always been my dog.
The reason we decided we had to put him down was because Patch's hips have been going out for years. It is a common thing for that to happen in labs. A year ago, just after Justin and I started dating, we had discussed that the time would come when he needed to decide that it was time. All winter, Patch struggled with his hips and being able to even stand up, due to the cold affecting his hips even worse. Whenever I would go over, he would still approach me with a stick and always wanted to play fetch. Well, on Friday, Justin and I both went over to his parents house and we realized that Patch's hips have gotten much worse, just in the past few days. We decided that we needed to take him in the next day.
When we got to Justin's parents house yesterday, Patch just laid on the floor of the garage (his usual place) until I got out of the car. When Justin got out of the car, he just laid there, and then he saw me and hopped up (the fastest I've seen him get up in a long time) grabbed a stick and walked over with it to me. It made me laugh that even the day that we had to take him to be put down, he was still coming over to me with a stick to play fetch. I threw the stick up in the air and Patch caught it in his mouth. We let Justin's niece and nephews and his sister in law say their goodbyes to him, then we loaded him up into the mustang.
On the ride over to the humane society, Patch cried the whole way there. He had to have known what was coming. He finally stopped crying when Justin put his arm around him and told him it was going to be ok. When we pulled into the parking lot and Justin got out of the car, to go fill out the paperwork inside, I was left sitting in the car with Patch. This was a little bit of a chore, because Patch started climbing all over the car, and barking very loudly. Justin came back outside and Patch calmed down again. We got out of the car, took him inside, and he went in fine. The lady inside told us we could take a few minutes to say goodbye to him, so we took him back outside, both of us crying and said our goodbyes. Then, trying to take him back inside was another chore. Patch broke the leash off of the tag it was clipped to, he didn't run, he just stood there and looked at us like, ooops. Then, he did it again to the second tag we clipped it to. Once again he just stood there and looked at us. We finally got him back inside, the lady replaced his collar with a type of rope to take him back with. We took the collar, and we left. Both of us crying.
I will never forget Patch. He was my first dog, and he was such a good dog and cared about us so much.
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