We (mom and dad) took Xena to the vet today at 5 p.m. She has gone on to better places where she can chase rabbits.
-Mom

Xina adopted us when I was in high school. Her mother was a neighbor’s dog, that was looking for food and ended up in our barn in the dead of winter. We captured the puppies and took them back to the neighbor. A couple of days later the bitch and puppies were back and we we captured them again, except for Xena she was too scarred to come out from under the wood pile. We took the other dogs back, where the puppies were locked in a shed by the neighbor and they froze/starved.

We kept Xena, she was always shy and scared of most people even as a puppy. She lay by our older dog Jet when he was sick and she saved our cat, Mary, and her kittens when she was giving birth and another cat was pestering her.

She liked to go on walks with dad, up and down the two miles that he walks in the morning. She was the ultimate scavenger and hunter. She would bring all sort of carrion to the front yard. She would hide in my parents room when people came in the house. She would come out for special people and children.

This summer she was diagnosed with Chushing’s Disease when she could no longer hold her bladder. She was gated off in the kitchen, which she would stay in at night and dad would mop in the morning. She went from a vibrant and energetic this spring, to not being able to get up off the kitchen floor this weekend, when my mom bumped into her and knocked her over.

So my parents made the decision this weekend to put her down.

It’s really sad.