January 2015 – SoFeyen – The Personal Site of Matt Feyen

While we would have loved to bring Caesar home with us that first night we saw him, he was too young to take from his beagle mom yet. It broke my heart leaving him know that his brothers and sisters would probably continue to get the best of him in the weeks to come. However, we knew that we would be back to rescue him.

In the weeks to come your Mom and I had lots of discussions about what was going to happen and how we were going to take care of Caesar. However, when you love someone as much as we loved Caesar a lot of those plans and rules that we made got bent or broke. They started with the car ride home.

We had decided we were going to crate train and that Caesar would ride in the car in a crate because that was supposed to be the safest way to do it. Almost before we even got out of Litchfield on the hour ride home Caesar was on your Mom’s lap in the passengers seat because it broke our hearts to listen to him cry inside the crate.

He would rarely ride in the crate in the car and he definitely spent more time in our laps in the front seats or buckled in his harness in the back seat than he spent in a crate in the car.

We had also decided that when we got home Caesar’s crate would be downstairs in the living room because we knew he would cry and we knew it was best for his house training to stay in the crate. The first night he was in the house the crate made its way up to our bedroom.

In fact while he was in his crate being trained, until he fell asleep or whenever he would wake up one of us would lay on the floor next to his crate with our fingers inside the crate to keep him from crying and comfort him.

We had decided when Caesar was trained that he would lay on the dog bed next to our bed because their was no way he was sleeping in our bed. He not only slept in our bed, but he created the standard H position and created a whole other set of challenges.

He not only slept in bed in between your Mom and I. He slept under the covers, but only until he got overheated and would come huffing and puffing out from under the covers. That would last until he was ready to go back under where he required one of us to lift up the covers so he could go back under the covers until he got overheated……Wash, rinse, repeat.

We broke a lot of the rules and plans when it came to Caesar and we did the same for both of you. Because when you love something as much as we loved Caesar and as much as we love you it does not always lead to logic.

We said good bye to Caesar on Friday and it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. The best moment of that incredibly crappy day though came when big brother leaned down to kiss Caesar as we left him for the last time and said, “I’ll see you in heaven.”

Since then, big brother did a book that was given to us by the people who helped us say good bye. As he was drawing pictures, trimming photographs to paste and writing his memories I heard him read that sometimes it helps to write your pet’s life story so that is my intention here for a while. However, staying with the intent of writing these messages to you I will try to offer a few lessons taught to us by our experiences with Caesar along the way.

Caesar was meant to be our dog from the beginning. Your mom and I used to watch a lot of Animal Planet and it just so happened that on a Saturday night in 1999 they had on a dog show and during the dog show the 13″ beagle stepped up to be judged. We had been talking about the idea of getting a dog for so long, but decided that we needed to have a house first which we had just recently got and get through our wedding day which we had just recently done. When we saw the 13″ beagle we had finally an idea of the type of the dog that we would want.

The next morning your mom was reading the classifieds in the paper and saw and ad for 13″ beagles. We called that day and were told that all the dogs in the litter were already gone, but we asked if we could still come out and meet them. Lisa, from RiverBottom Beagles, said that they would probably have another litter soon and that we were welcome to come out.

After we both got done with work on a night that week we got in the car to make the hour long trip to Litchfield. On the way we got a phone call from Lisa. She let us know that one of the buyers had backed out and that if we wanted we could have our pick of the males in the litter. We knew we wanted a boy too so everything seemed to be falling into place.

When we got there she brought a green laundry basket out full of beagle puppies and she asked us which one we thought we would want. It all seemed to be going so fast and your mom definitely is not an impulse shopper, but it just felt right.

Then I saw him, the runt of the litter getting his but kicked by his brothers and sisters as they crawled over him. I remember it like was yesterday. I simply said, “I want him.”

It was just meant to be and that is where the story of Caesar begins.

Month: January 2015

I Learned Everything I Need to Know From Caesar – Love Changes Things

I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Caesar: It Was Meant To Be