Rest in Peace, Obi

Obi

July 1999 - October 21, 2008

To our A#1 Security Guard, Violet Smoocher, Toodler Food Cleaner Upper, Beer Drinker and all around best pup. We miss you already!

Obi went downhill fast these last few days. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but probably just old age. He was over 100 lbs and 10 years old, which is old for a big guy. He spent the day yesterday taking nap in the Colorado sunshine and hanging out with us on the porch watching the world go by. By the evening he wasn't able to get up by himself anymore, and it was heartbreaking to watch this normally huge, strong dog have to be carried outside and back in again. It's incredible how fast that can happen.

We took him to the vet this morning where he peacefully left this world for hopefully a much better one than we know. Here are a few pictures of him from the last few years:

He was always so gentle with Violet. She was only a few months old here. He wanted to lick her ALL THE TIME those first few months. She WAS pretty delicious!
Here he's showing his size :) Violet was about 5 months old.
Here is Violet tasting his ear.
This is the last picture we have of him from last night. Violet plopped herself down in the middle of her dogs to read a book.
And this is one of my favorite pictures of our dogs, taken in 2006 (when they were still our only "kids"!) Obi is on the left, Porter on the right.Jon and I still aren't sure we know how to do this marriage thing without Obi. We got him at the tail end of our 2.5 month honeymoon/tour around the U.S. in our old VW Bus. We found him at a shelter in Tampa, FL. He was about 10 lbs, and they thought about 3 months old. They kept saying he'd be about 50 lbs at most. We named him Oberon after the beer that Jon was missing the most - ironically he LOVED to drink beer. He had been known to knock over full beer cans with his nose and hold it with his paw to lap it all up.

I hope he's hanging out somewhere like this. We miss you!