The Scratching Post: Pepito Ramón, 2002

We had to put our little man to sleep this morning. He had stopped eating and was clearly on his way out. It was pretty sad and reminded me of sitting with my mom in November after she had stopped eating. I just couldn't do that again, so we took him to the vet.

If you don't know his story, we were on vacation in Alabama last summer when a friend of ours, who works in real estate, asked for someone to adopt an abandoned, old dog. Pepito had been left behind when a family sold their house. They came back, planning to have him put down, but we said we'd take him. And so we did.

Pepito Ramón was a good, little guy. He had plenty of energy for an 18-year-old dog and loved to go for sniffs. He didn't walk, really, he just wandered around and sniffed things. He made friends with children and smaller dogs easily, but for some reason, he never got close to any of our other dogs. He was always a canine apart.

I loved the little dude and will miss him.

What we knew about Pepito Ramón

He was Pepito Ramón,
He once swam the Rhone,
He taught at Sorbonne,
He lived in our home
... to not be alone

Yes, we made up a song about him and sang it to him all the time with many different rhyming verses. He was stone deaf, so the song was really for us.