Favorite Photo Friday – Remembering Chelsea

My parents had to have their dog Chelsea put to sleep yesterday. She was 13. Her hips had given out and she was in a lot of pain. (If you remember from this post, Noah has been saying that his hips were “going bad like Chelsea’s.”)

When my mom and Tom got married, Tom had two Rottweilers named Ben and Dutchess. Since Tom was a bachelor, Ben and Dutchess were inside dogs. My mom was not a fan. After they both passed away, my mom declared they were not going to have any more animals. However, I finally convinced her that Tom needed a dog. We got Chelsea at the Humane Society in 1996, and we gave her to my step-dad as an early Father’s Day present just before I left to work in Okinawa, Japan, for the summer.

Like most dogs, Chelsea had her quirks. She wouldn’t walk on hardwood or tile floors. When Christian and I would dog-sit while my parents went on vacation, we had to make a trail of throw rugs from our family room, through the kitchen, and down the hallway so she get upstairs to sleep in our room at night. (People who didn’t know Chelsea and visited while she was there thought we had a very strange home decorating style.)

She was terrified of fireworks and thunderstorms, and she did not like being shut in rooms. I don’t know how many wooden doors she destroyed at my parents’ house after being accidentally closed in their bedroom.

She wasn’t allowed on the couch or the bed, but she knew that rule only applied when my mom was home. When it was just Tom, she got to snuggle up next to him.

She will be missed.