Howie

Howie died. So now we have Winnie.

~ christine ~ 2 Comments

It was difficult to know what/how much to tell Joel about Howie. The morning after we put Howie down, I probably did everything child psychologists tell you NOT to do as it relates to explaining death to kids… I first didn’t say anything at all. Then, when Joel, with a confused look on his face, went to go feed Howie, I explained, “Howie took a vacation.” He seemed to accept this much to my relief. Continue reading →

Howie

~ christine ~ 14 Comments

I posted about this on Instagram, but I figured I’d elaborate here… We recently had to say goodbye to our sweet fur baby, Howie. We had Howie for about ten years – he was our first “child” before we had real children, and he was with us through a crap ton of both good and bad times. For some reason the bad times are sticking out in my mind more, particularly job loss and moving and home building (which wasn’t all bad but was pretty awful before I knew what truly awful felt like) and obviously Matthew’s death. Continue reading →

On Joel and Howie

~ christine ~ 9 Comments

When Howie was younger we took him on a float trip with friends, and it was kind of miserable, because there was some midnight puking in the tent and a long bus ride to the river, after which Howie raced off the bus and humped another dog as they ran down the shore (who knew dogs could run so fast and hump so hard at the same time), and then Howie wanted to jump out of the raft or canoe or whatever we were riding, so he was whimpering for like seven hours, and we had to restrain him, and, most notably, because we were in the sticks of Missouri, apparently no one had ever seen a golden doodle before, so about 300 inebriated people questioned us (some from hundreds of yards away), “WHAT KIND OF DOG IS SHE?!?!” (One would have thunk we were floating down the river with a fucking Siberian tiger.) Continue reading →