I'm surprised now that I didn't really write much about Sunny himself in that post. How he came to me as a foster who needed a quiet place to recover from knee surgery for 2 months and my place was quiet, with 13 1/2 yr old Network, my first Lab, winding down to his last days. How I knew immediately that he'd be a great therapy dog and someone would surely want to adopt him and do that with him. But after letting Network go, I needed Sunny. And having seen what he did when I took him to the respite foster while I was dealing with Network, I knew Sunny needed me. His name at Safe Harbor was Sonny, but he was clearly Sunny. So I adopted him and changed his name, and he promptly tore his other ACL. I wasn't as well trained about the recovery therapy as I was later when I took Xander through it.
The most memorable thing about Sunny was what a good patient he was. 6 months after he finished his recovery from the 2nd knee, he started having seizures. We got those under control and then he started having eye problems. By the time we finally got to the point of removing his eyes, he was up to 24 eye drops a day, 4 different types of drops, and 3 or 4 oral meds. But he was such a trooper. Giving him pills was never a challenge. When it was time for his eye drops, he just put his head up, eyes open, held still and didn't fight it at all. One time in those years I had to give Star some eye meds and it was a battle to the finish, serving mostly to make me realize how lucky I was that Sunny was the opposite.
He did work a bit for a couple years as a therapy dog in Reading Rovers, but his medical conditions kept him from doing as much as I had hoped. I hope a teenager somewhere out there remembers a special dog that listened to them read back when they were in the first grade. I hope he made an impact on some young lives.
Once his eyes came out, he was finally free or in control of all his medical conditions and, after 4 long years, less than that even, life was finally good for our little guy. He was happy, fearless when out and about in new places, and so easy going. He had 4 more wonderful, healthy, uneventful years and then a swift decline with minimal suffering.
The time/place I sense his absence the most is on road trips and dog walks. Enjoying complexity as I do, I liked the challenge of juggling three dogs in and out of the van on long road trips, in the dangerous heat of the summer and the dangerous extreme colds of the winter that we traveled through. He isn't missing from our home because he never lived in this one. We lost him about 6 weeks before moving into the new house. But our walks and road trips are less complex, not necessarily a good thing in my book.
I also kinda miss having a special needs kid. There's something special about the one that needs a little more care and protection. But really he didn't - he was the most independent of my three and if allowed off leash, he just trotted off happily, following his nose, without a care in the world.
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