Amy RIP April 25th 1999 - June 8th 2015

edited June 2015 in Other Breeds
Today (April 25th) is Amy's birthday. She turned 16! Wow...so old. It is weird to think that she and I have been together since she was a puppy. How did the time go by so quickly?

I know Border Collies aren't all that popular here on the forum, which was why I never made her a thread before. But she's 16 and special so I figure, "eh, why not?"

I do have a ton of pictures to post but they are currently still uploading. So for now I'll leave you with a photo put up on the Facebook page of one of our favorite supply stores (the one with the black lab Meitou loves). They were impressed that Amy was 16 and thought she might be one of the oldest dogs to come to their store, lol, so she made it to Facebook.

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Here's the link
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Comments

  • HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMY! :D

    16 is awesome! I hope she's doing well.
  • @Crispy Thanks! I'm not sure how well she is doing, exactly. She's still happy and loves her (really slow, kind of short) walks and loves her food, but...she is not in great physical shape any more. Wobbly, no leg muscle, has lost about 10 pounds in the past 6 months to a year, has cataracts in both eyes, partially deaf, gets easily confused, trips over nothing, runs into walls, can't back up has had arthritis for years, does not like it when Meitou is having fun (she's gotten really bad the last month or so), can't hold her bladder as long...the list goes on. Old age hasn't been kind to her. But she is still happy.

    Birthday Girl

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    Meeting Bishop at Pampered Paws. Bishop may have punched her in the face (okay, light tap).

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    Amy loves cats.

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    Hello, Otis. I think his name is Otis...

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    Then we went to Petco and I found this cute Birthday (Barkday?) bandana (which is reversible with polka dots on the other side). I had to buy it. Life said so.

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    After hitting the stores I took Amy to a local walking trail.

    She may have fallen in a pothole just after I took this shot and I had to help her back up onto the trail.

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    Since Amy is slow and will basically go in a straight line when let go...I let her off leash. Sometimes this confuses her and she will stop moving because "where did the leash go?"



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    At one point I think she forgot she was with anybody. Just happily trundled along until she realized I was missing.

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    *Note: I would put her leash back on when other people or dogs were near even though she ignored the few we saw. And I would put it back on her randomly. And also when we found water. Otherwise I was afraid she'd go too far out into the water and drown herself.

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    After the trail we stopped by one of the larger local parks where Amy got some love from kids.

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    We watched the end of some soccer game. I'm still not sure who won.

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    We found a rock with a red heart painted on it so naturally I made Amy pose with it.

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    This face. It kills me.

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    She was getting bored of posing.

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    On a picnic table!

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  • Her Puppy Cake.

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    The round steak I bought her (and Meitou) for dinner.

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    Messy eater.

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    And naturally Meitou goes in to play with/harrass the cat in the background...



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    The new collar I bought her at Pampered Paws.

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  • Happy Birthday Amy!

    I love that you and Amy love each other so much, and have had such long time in dog-years to enjoy each other. 16! That's a beautiful thing and I salute Amy's vigor and good nature! Happy Birthday, gal!
  • Border Collies are awesome! Happy
    birthday Amy!
  • Happy birthday Amy! What a testament to how much we love our children with tails. The bond we have with them is such an amazing feeling. It's obvious how much Amy loves you and you her. Happy birthday again Amy and many more.
  • Happy birthday Amy! Border Collies are very cool dogs. It looks like she had a very nice birthday adventure, too!
  • Aww, this warmed my heart. It seems like she had a very special birthday. Happy birthday Amy! Thanks for sharing this. She looks like such a sweet and happy girl.
  • Happy birthday! 16 is a nice age! :)

  • edited April 2015
    Thanks everyone! She is pretty sweet, especially with people. She loves to greet people and has always been pretty polite about it. She seems to have a special fondness for the elderly and she has since she was young. She definitely enjoyed her special day. As soon as we got home she passed out in the kitchen and slept there for a long time. And after her dinner and cake she just went back to sleep.

    It makes me happy she made it to 16. The few dog friends she made when she was younger all passed away some time ago (she prefers interacting with people to dogs). As she was getting into her teen years I kept thinking "well, they say Border Collies live 12 to 15 years on average...how long will she still be with me." Each year that goes by and she is still with me fills me with gratitude. She can be an odd duck but I love her and I don't want her to be gone. But with the way her health has been going the past year...it does have me a bit worried. :(
  • Happy birthday Amy! She's a super pretty girl and doesn't look anywhere near 16 :) It looks like she's had a blast for her birthday too!
  • She didn't start going white on the black half of her face until 14 or 15. People always seem surprised when they hear how old she is. But it is probably only weird because I already know her age so it seems more obvious to me. She definitely moves like an old dog, though. She is not very agile any more.

    Today was kind of funny. I have her some string cheese and she got a string stuck to her lip and didn't know it was there. She walked around for at least fifteen minutes before she got rid of it. It looked like a super thick drool strand.
  • edited May 2015
    So Rice-Face happened recently... Sometimes it kills me how messy she is with food.

    Sorry, it's blurry and she looks weird.

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    I ended up having to hold on to her muzzle to keep her head in place because she kept moving.

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  • So sweet, border collies are such a beautiful dog. my aunt has a red girl named Gypsy and she's probably about 10 now but acts like a puppy most the time. Lives with a ball in her mouth unless she's eating.

    Love all the pictures, beautiful!
  • I am sad to say that June 8th 2015 I lost Amy. It still doesn't feel like she should be gone.

    The short story is she hasn't been doing super awesome and recently had to go to the vet because she had eye and nose discharge. She was diagnosed with dry eye (her right eye was producing no tears and her left eyes was producing very, very little) and she had an ulcer on her right eye. She was also super dehydrated even though we thought she had been getting water. We got medications for that and had to syeringe food and water into her and she seemed to mostly be improving (she was eating and drinking on her own and going on walks again)...although on the 7th she seemed to be getting nasal discharge again.

    Monday morning she was fine in the morning. When I got home Meitou and Avery were upstairs in the kitchen. I put a few things away, then went downstairs where it was cooler (it was a hot day, over 90 I think) and talked with some family. Kind of out of nowhere I asked "Where's Amy? I didn't see her upstairs." That's where she should have been.

    I looked around for her for a while and couldn't find her anywhere. Some family started helping me look. We found her outside, stuck under a modified planting tower (it's hard to explain). No one knows how long she was out there because they didn't really keep an eye on her I guess, though other family members don't think she could have been out there super long. We found her and she was lethargic and breathing hard. I carried her inside and started giving her water via a syringe. But I knew that wouldn't be enough so I got my mother to help me take Amy to the vet.

    They took her in immediately and tried to lower her temperature and get an IV in her. The vet on duty let us know she was in shock from heatstroke and she had a temperature around 106 degrees. After trying to help her a little longer the vet determined the only way she might survive was to go to urgent care and even then there wasn't a particularly good chance of her surviving so I ended up making the call to have her put to sleep to ease her suffering. She was already having a harder time breathing.

    The vet also thinks there was also an underlying health problem.

    We are all a little confused because she really didn't go anywhere by herself any more. She would stick close to people and often we had to take her out to go to the bathroom (because we have stairs to get to either yard). So no one is sure when she went out or why.

    I've been going through old pictures and will be uploading some old photos of Amy, but it is taking longer than I expected.
  • edited June 2015
    I'm so so sorry @WhoBitMe :( hugs to you and your family ♥ it sounds like she lived a wonderful long life!!
  • oh, no... I'm sorry Amy has passed. I have always enjoyed the way you wrote about her and her silly rice. She was a happy girl and a perfect friend to you and to Meitou. When you feel like sharing more about her here, please do- she is always one of our Forum Pack and we did miss out on the Early Adventures of Amy.
  • That is heartbreaking news. :(

    I am so sorry to hear about this, but know that she lived an amazing life with you and your family.

    *hugs*
  • Sorry to hear. RIP Amy.
  • I'm sorry to hear. She was clearly very loved and lucky to have you
  • So sorry to hear this :( Like others have said, it's very clear that she was loved and she was an amazing dog.
  • I'm so sorry for your loss. She seemed like such a sweet girl. I can tell she was well loved and I'm sure she was very happy.
  • Sorry to hear of your loss. Amy looks like a lovely, sweet girl. Your are both lucky to have had each other. (I had a BC named Frisky. Had to put him down due to bone cancer.)
  • Sorry for your loss :'( Amy looked like an incredibly happy dog
  • RIP Amy. Our family had to say goodbye to their loveable golden retriever last year, and my wife's family did the same. It's a sad time. She looked very happy and must have had a great life!
  • Sorry for your loss <3 <3 <3 ~
  • She had an awesome life with you. I'm so sorry for your loss. How are you doing?
  • M so sorry for your loss. Whenever you're ready, we're here for you.
  • @mdokic @WrylyBrindle @sunyata @Saya @Koyuki @Trzcina @LiaMarie @sukoshi_mom @emi802 @TheYeti @Sangmort @Crispy @WhiteGC8 Thank you, everyone, for your condolences. It's weird that she's been gone for over a week now. Sometimes I still expect to see her. There have been a couple nights where I could have sworn I heard her barking--she had a very distinctive bark in her old age. And oddly, I had a dream I was in my backyard with Meitou and my mother and Amy came running up. In the dream my mother and I were like "are you seeing this?" because Amy was supposed to be dead. She was running around and happy and...was playing with a white Hokkaido puppy that was apparently Meitou as a puppy even though he was already there.

    I do eventually want to tell more about Amy, but talking about her to others still makes me cry a lot, so I'll just leave you with a couple pictures and update this thread again soon.

    I realized I don't really have any pictures of her when she was young. I didn't have my own camera until she was 11 or 12.



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    How did she get them to be so symmetrical?

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    My beautiful lady, with me for so long and it still feels too soon to let her go.
  • I love these pictures! Thanks for sharing Amy with us, and including her symmetrical rice nose picture, and her towel, and her frisbee... what a lot of fun she had and laughs. and how great that she visited you in your dream! :)
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