Scarlette is almost eleven years old, which is pretty old for a bloodhound.  She is blind, but gets around like a pro.  Her nose still works and she still chases cats.  Well at least up to a week ago.  She got out on accident and was hit by a car.  The vet checked her out and everything seemed fine, but then she started getting stiffer, and lost weight and seemed in pain and then a couple days ago she couldn’t stand up anymore.  We’ve been nursing her and doing everything we can, but it doesn’t look like it’s helping.

There’s not a lot of things worse than having to put a dog down.  They’re such loyal and loving companions.  Scarlette was a working police dog for most of her life.  She was mistreated by her owner and the breeder took her back.  Scarlette was so aggressive that the breeder called us and asked that we take her or she’d be put down.  So we of course took her.  And she was aggressive.  In fact, we didn’t even go out into the yard with her without a gun for the first year we had her.  She never did anything, but there were a lot of close calls and there have been a few cats and even a dog that lost their lives to her over the past few years that we’ve owned her.  The longer she’s lived here though, the more she’s mellowed.  She became friendly and then loving.  She liked to play with us.  She never stopped being aggressive to other dogs and the cat’s lives only became safe when Scarlette went blind, as a matter of fact, she was chasing cats only a couple days ago but fortunately she bumped into a chair right before she caught the stupid critter.

I suppose it’s a good thing that her life went from healthy to bad enough to probably be put to sleep in only 2 days.  If only all of us could be that lucky.  We almost bought Scarlette when she was a puppy and we wish we had of so that she wouldn’t have dealt with the abuse she had with her previous owner, but we are happy that we could make her last few years happy and full of love.  I hope she pulls through her current sickness and gives us a bit more time to enjoy the sweet dog that she’s become.