On Friday, I got a call from my dad that he and his girlfriend Linda were going to take their Great Dane, Shelby, to the vet I reccomended to them a while back, and have her put to sleep. I only live a few blocks away, and I went over there a couple times that day to spent a few last hours with Shelby, and J.G. came with me and took some pictures of her. I was pretty choked up for most of the day, except for when I was actually there with Shelby, because I could never help smiling when she was around.

We all knew it had been coming for a while, since she'd been limping and not walking on her front right leg much for the last month or two. I always took care of Shelby for Dad whenever they were out of town, and did it a couple times in the last few months. And the last time I looked after her for a few days, her leg was so bad I could barely get her to walk across the street to go pee. Apparently cancer is very common in large breeds, but we weren't sure that was it until pretty recently, and the last few days the lump in her shoulder got bigger and bigger. But she was 9 years old, and 8 is the average lifespan for a Dane, so she lived a good, long life.

When Dad started dating Linda maybe 6 or 7 years ago, he hadn't a dog in about 30 years, and wasn't planning on having one. But he was just crazy about Shelby, who ended up moving into his house a few months before Linda even did. One year, for Valentine's Day, her gift was to sign ownership of Shelby over to him, so if they ever split up he'd keep the dog. Dad spoiled that dog so much, feeding her half of his dinner sometimes. And the last few years since he's retired and been spending a lot of his days at home alone, Shelby became really important to him and I think kinda kept him sane. I'd never had a dog or considered myself a dog person before, but Shelby and I got along really well. We used to say that Shelby's heirarchy of loyalty went Linda, then Dad, then me, then certain other family members, then everybody else. She'd love playing tug-of-war with me and an old shirt or towel, always jumped up on her hind legs and put her front paws on my shoulders when I came to see her.

I have a lot of great memories of Shelby, most of which are pretty basic dog things and wouldn't be particularly interesting stories to those that didn't know her. But she was a great dog with a really sweet personality. She was small for a Dane, so people always assumed she was a puppy, which she still acted like, even when her muzzle started turning gray. I used to walk her through the neighborhood and I swear every other person in Southeast Baltimore knew Shelby by name, even if they didn't know who me or my dad was. And I know I won't be the only person who'll miss her. Dad is really an emotional mess right now. The last few years, he'd talk about maybe getting another Great Dane someday, and Linda always sounded like she didn't want another dog, but the other day he said they'd already started looking on adoption sites for a Great Dane puppy, so Shelby may have a successor.

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