Karla's Kolumn: Saying goodbye to a great rat hunter

Our ad salesperson Erin came back to the Lovell Chronicle office from getting photos for the pet of the week. She told me I had to check this dog out. She showed me the photograph and I agreed I had to meet this 6-month-old blue heeler cross pup.

We called the animal control officer and rushed back to the Lovell pound. It was love at first sight for both Sarah and I. A few hours later I had a vet appointment to get her spayed and I was loading her into the back of the vehicle introducing her to her new brother Luke. Well I was trying to introduce them, Luke didn't want her coming in his vehicle but he eventually did.

Hers was a humble and difficult beginning. She was our first "rescue." The animal control officer said he had her a few days and was able to finally identify the owners. When he contacted them they told him they were moving and he could take the grey dog if he wanted. They didn't know Sarah had gotten loose and run away. They didn't know she was missing.

She had been tied outside and forgotten, until I took her home, and she will never be forgotten, forever etching a place in our hearts.

My husband and I had Luke, and we had lost an older dog a few months before. I finally decided yes, it was time to get another dog. We had contacted a few shelters and were even looking at a dog in Powell but it wasn't ready for adoption.

My husband left for a meeting in Torrington on Monday, and on Tuesday I called and told him we had a new fur child.

Because of her neglect at a young age she craved attention and we, as you well know from previous columns about our fur kids, were more than willing to give her all the attention she needed. Despite being a medium-sized dog she thought she was a lap dog and that was OK with us. She became a great snuggler, snuggling up to me at the end of the day as I would relax on the couch. Or she would ask to get up on my husband's lap in his recliner, and he always obliged.

Despite the rough start between her and Luke they became pretty good pals. He would try to run interference when we were trying to break her of digging holes in the backyard. Each day when I got home from work, I would go out and start walking. I knew where to find the holes because it would be the direction Luke didn't want me to go.

Luke also helped teach Sarah to swim, although unwillingly. Luke, a border collie/German shepherd cross, loved the water and loved to swim. Sarah was apprehensive at first when we would take them to a lake or a pond. She would wade out and then put her paws on Luke's back to use him as a sort of life preserver. One day Luke outsmarted her, he swam out a ways and then was able to swim away from her. There she was away from shore having to swim back. She loved it. They would chase the ripples from rocks we would toss into the lake.

She survived a move to Laramie and then to Basin. It was in Basin she found her first calling, as a partner for my husband when he had mapping projects he would take her with him during the summer and she got to enjoy the mountains.

Sarah found her other calling when we moved here, in my well-documented rat column. She was our rat hunter/killer.

When she was younger we had someone tell us that she had a "soft mouth," which would make her a good bird dog.

When it came to rats she did not have a soft mouth, at least not after she got bit. After that incident she didn't play around but instead would go for the "jugular" so to speak, every time. Let's just say she never gave another rat time or chance to bite her again.

I don't know how she did it, but if there was a rat around somewhere, she could find it, in the lawn mower, wheel well of one of the camper tires, vehicles, under or in the dog house, under pallets. And if she found one, she would not move until we came and got it out for her to take care of. She knew her job and she did it well.

She loved her treats and knew when it was time and would not relent until she got them every night.

But on Tuesday night, she let us know her 15-year-old body had had enough. Her back legs couldn't sustain her any longer. Her spirit was willing, but the body was not.

And, on Wednesday she crossed the rainbow bridge to be with her brother Luke.

It's never easy letting go and saying good bye to a dear friend, a fur daughter, an encourager who brought a smile to your face every time you saw her, a confidant as she was great at just listening; never judging, just loving.

My heart aches this week. Our house is sad and quiet as we miss her but we remember the many times she made us smile, and there were many.

It is times like this I wonder why we, as humans seem to put so much emphasis on quantity of life rather than quality. Without quality of life, you are not really living, only existing.

We rescued Sarah to give her a quality of life, one that she did not know the first six months of her life. I believe we were able to do that. And in the end, when it came time to make that choice, we chose quality over quantity, we chose her needs over our needs.

The look she gave both my husband and I Tuesday night as she was in pain, unable to get up; I saw that look in a loved one's eye who was fighting cancer many years ago. They kept fighting, not for themselves but for their loved ones.

I slept on the couch with her Tuesday night, she comforting me, me comforting her, each of us telling the other in our own way it was going to be all right.

In the end, after 15 years, I know she was loved and I know she felt loved and we were blessed to have been loved by her.