Ginny was welcome member of our family and a very dearly loved dog. We got her when my sisters and I were young children and she was one year old after her previous owners family friends said that she was “too mild and calm” for them. This type of a disposition is not common in Cocker Spaniels. We loved her immediately.
She was unusually sweet and had a great manor with children. My mother had a home daycare for 15 years and through many different children playing horsie or pulling on her ears over the years she never once bit or snapped at a child.
We took her on many vacations to the lake with our boat as she loved to be with us doing what we did. She loved to go swimming in the lake to cool off her beautiful black mane and wanted to play with the children. She always seemed to know when it was a good time to play and when it was a good time to just sit quietly.
She had two litters of puppies. The expected number of puppies in one litter for Cocker Spaniels is 4 to 6. In her first litter she had 10 and in her second she had 9! We still run into people all of the time who have one of Ginny’s puppies and many of our friends and family members had one of her puppies or grand-puppies too. They were a wonderful blessing for Ginny.
As she got older she began to have health problems. From heartworms to bad ears to terrible arthritis Ginny just wasn’t the same. She would just lay around all day and sleep inbetween meals. Our lives also got so busy as my sisters and I became teenagers and young adults that we didn’t devote the time to her that we used to. Now we wish that we had. Her quality of life went away probably two years before her recent death. She couldn’t hear and she could barely see.
On the morning of March 22 2001 my parents were out of town I was at work and my older sister was at her apartment. My younger sister was the only one at home keeping watch of the house while everyone else was away. She called my Mom to tell her that she was worried about Ginny – that her eyes were glazed over and that she looked gravely ill. Then my mother’s neighbor and friend offered to take her to have her put to sleep and end her suffering.
We are all deeply saddened over this great loss of a dear member of our family but we know that it’s for the best. Her suffering is over and she is in no more pain. She was a big part of our childhood and now that I have a child she loved her too. Her memory still remains in our hearts and will forever.
Melody