Some more than a week ago I wrote a post about our first dog Bo. Bo was my big friend and our kid in our family. We had a lot to put up with him, but in the end it was the most greatest dog you can ever whish for. You can read the post here.

This post is about our other dog Ozzy. Ozzy was a black labrador retriever which we got in November 2003. Right three months before our oldest son was born. After the death of Bo we really didn't want to have another dog anymore because the loss of Bo hurted us the most. We were devestated about it...

Bo, our first Labrador

When Bo died we were some time without a pet in the house until there was a break in in our house. Thieves got in our house, they stole our car, mobile phones and (the thing I was the most upset about) my bassguitar at that time. When the police came to investigate there was this policewoman we already knew shallow. She made a note that perhaps it was safer to have a dog in the house, it frightens potential burglars. At first I didn't want any dog no more because I had such a heartache losing Bo, I didn't think I wanted or couldn't go trough that again. But we made the decission to get a other dog, also a Labrador. We called him Ozzy (yes from Ozzy Osbourne)...

Opposite to Bo we had Ozzy from when he was a puppy, or baby as my kids said. The great thing about that was that we experienced the whole proces. The day he was born, visited him while he still was with his mother before he could live on his own (with us of course).

Because all the puppies looked like eachother the put a coloured lint around their neck so we could keep them apart. Ozzy was a friendly dog who didn't wanted to be the first to walk towards something. He always looked a while before he got to it. If you read the fora everybody had a opinion in what it means. There are people who say it means the dogs is affraid, some say it's back-holding. For us it didn't really matter because we knew he came at our house and that's where the real 'raising' began.

he was so cute when he was a puppy, it was so adorable...you couldn't stand his look with his lovely black eyes....

Finally he could come home with us, become a reall part of the family. We bought ourselves a bench where we could put him in when we weren't at home (from our experience with Bo).. At first I had some problems with it because I felt like we were putting him in jail :) but when we let him get used to it, it felt for him like a kind of save haven...

On this picture the bench was just a few minutes old, so don't worry he got a blanket in it;)

Ozzy was a cheerfull dog, when he was a pup he was naughty like !@#, but that's all in the game. We have laughed a lot about his actions. Sometimes when I lay on the couch he came crawling towards me and took a bite in my finger with those tiny siccors in his mouth....

He also loved to lay on top of me on the couch and have a nap together. That was so cool, for us the proof he really loved it, and of course we loved him..

In january my wife gave birth to our oldest son, so we had two babies in the house. It was a quiet busy time but it was so cool to see those two growing up together.

We went to puppycourse with Ozzy, just to teach him the basics so we could walk him without having to correct him each time. And he did great, he got his certificate and we were enjoying the walks outside.

He was very gentle to ours son, and after two years sons. The loved him very much and played a lot with him. They were to young to walk him alone because Ozzy had grown to a adult labrador, a big black beauty :)....

We've noticed at a point that he was losing a lot of hair, at first we thought it was just because of the season and he was losing his winter hair but it was just a lot, every single day. Besides the fact we had to vacuum two times a day (which was no problem) we've also noticed he was scratching himself a lot, especially at night when we were already in bed. So we went to the veterinarian to look if he had something under his skin. At first they didn't find anything , but his problems remains. So the veterinarian proposed a bloodtest and a allergictests. Of course we did that because we wanted to know what's wrong with him because he was really suffering from it. It wasn't a nice test because the pinched him with a lot of needles in his foot, but it was for the good cause.

After a week we got the results and he turned out to have a skin disease which makes his skin dry and itchy and, and that was the most worst for him , Ozzy turned out to be allergic for grass... Can you imagine, a dog who is allergic to grass. There wasn't really much we could do about that besides giving him medication for it to suppress the reaction... But we felt so sorry for him because he loved laying in the grass....

With the medication we could manage his illness for a long time, but he kept having itching. We tried to build the garden around the dog, so with no grass anymore, but you can't keep a dog from walking in the grass when you are walking the dog..

But beside the problems with his skin, he still was the wonderfull dog around the house, always cheerfull , playable and crazy with our kids.

Although we could suppress his a bit problems with mediaction, when he got older things got worse. He scratched himself untill he bled, he didn't looked cheerfull anymore because of his condition... We felt that every day was thougher for him...the look in his eyes....like if he would say "can you please help me"..... It was so sad....

We went again to the vet and asked him if there was anything we could do for him because we thought things were really getting worse, almost not holdable anymore for him. The vet did a new examination of his blood and discovered that his levels of allergic has increased by a 100%, so it was almost unbearable for him. His skin reacted terrible on it, even when we avoid anything that could trigger it.... So the vet told us that the itching was unbearable for him and that the prognose was that is was even getting worse in a short time...

So when we asked him what to do he advised us to put him to rest because eventually it would kill him..
It was a slap in the face for us, again we had to decide about something where you didn't want to decide about in the first place, and again way to soon (Ozzy was 8 at that time).....

Me and my wife have talked about it for some days cause we couldn't let this go any further the way it went, but this time we had two kids who loved this dog like nothing else.... It was a hard decision, but we did made the decision in his wellbeing, so we redeemed him from his suffering... It was just like with Bo such a hard decision..... When we brought him to the vet it was just like a 'normal' visit.... he was calm and quiet...
I was crying my eyes out knowing the next step..... when the vet gave him at first a injection with a sleeping aid, Ozzy went to sleep....he always snored at home, and the first thing he started to do was again snoring..... Thinking of that it gives me the chills and a laugh again, that was Ozzy....a big, great snoring labrador.... I remember one time when we were at a campsite, Ozzy stayed with us in the Caravan. My brother was over for the weekend, and he slept with us in the caravan. Ozzy was snoring like crazy, we were used to it but my brother wasnt... So he left the caravan and slept in his car...... Great memory....

When Ozzy was put to sleep we had to go home, we didn't took the kids with us to the vet because we thought they were still a bit young for that.. But with the four of us we cried our eyes out....

Ozzy at the camping

Lucky for the kids we went rather short after putting Ozzy to rest on Holiday, so they could set their mind of it for a bit and didn't have to face the missing at home every day... because that was hard, for all of us....comming downstairs in the morning and not seeing that big black beauty in the livingroom....

I remember my youngest, lying in his bed in the caravan on Holiday. There was this roofwindow, he said to me "Daddy, do you see that start above?" I said "Yes, I see it, what is it?".... He said "That's Ozzy, he is now a star in heaven and he is watching us.....".... You can imagine I had to leave the caravan because it broke my heart at that moment.....

This was the second time we had to say goodbye way to early to a part of our family... And I can tell you, it was so painfull for us that I really sworn that we never want to have that pain again, so we never commit outselves to a dog again....Selfish, yes....but put yourself in a position with so many greef....it's terrible...

Love your pets....

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