I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving, whether you spent it with family, friends, or the OP community online. It was a lot of fun to be social, and share recipes and good thoughts with each other for our first annual OP Friendsgiving.
Despite a good holiday with my loved ones, I write to you this morning with a heavy heart. The time has come to say goodbye to our beloved Thor.
Our beautiful Great Pyrenees is declining rapidly and we've been forced to make the decision to release him from his suffering. But I don't want to talk about his death. I want to tell you about his life.
We got Thor in
California when he was about two years old. He was an addition to our farm that we took on after he began quarreling with his previous owner's pigs. We didn't have pigs, just goats, chickens, and ducks, so he fit into our homestead beautifully.
He liked our mountain homestead even better than the one in the hot valley where we started out. I'll never forget the year we raised meat chickens. I would peek outside and he'd be laying on his side with 24 baby chicks peacefully snoozing on top of him. We never lost a chicken that was within his reach to care for. He was an amazing livestock guardian dog.
When my daughter graduated early from home school, we had to leave the state to continue her education. (She was just 15.) Our local friends clamored to adopt him, but instead, we opted to work with a trainer who specialized in giant LGDs to "civilize" him and retired him.
He's been the best
companion dog you could ask for ever since. Still watchful, he turned his guarding attentions toward us, our other dog, and our cats. He very much enjoyed napping indoors on a soft bed instead of outdoors in inclement weather. He learned not to bark at every single noise and adapted happily to the life of a pet.
When I went to Mexico for a year, Thor came along for the ride. Our sweet boy crossed the country in my Jeep on three separate occasions and is the dignified, friendly star of my apartment complex in North Carolina.
Thor will leave a Pyrenees-sized hole in our hearts.
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