Mister Rickie, ? - 2008

It is with deep sadness that we report the death of our beloved red pom, Mr. Rickie. You at Second Chance knew him as Richie but I renamed him Rickie because I have a cousin named that that I’m not to fond of and I didn’t want to think of him when I talked to Rickie. Through time we found ourselves adding the prefix Mr. to his name as it just seemed to fit.

My wife Sally and I first saw Mr. Rickie 4 ½ years ago when we were making a routine stop at Petco and spotted Mr. Rickie sitting in a crate at the exhibition set up by Second Chance to find homes for these unfortunate ones. Within a minute we decided we would adopt him and take him home and so we did.

With time Mr. Rickie warmed up to us after being a little cautious for a while and quickly became one of our spoiled “kids”. For quite a while we
tried to get him to walk on a leash connected to a harness as he had a collapsed trachea and we didn’t want to aggravate that. The first few times he just froze and wouldn’t budge. With time and continued work he finally would walk but pretty much went his own direction which could be any point of the compass or he would suddenly stop and refuse to budge, oh yes Rickie possessed a bit of stubbornness. I would walk him anyway not ever knowing where we would go or get there because Mr. Rickie pretty much decided which way he –and me – would head. Finally one day Sally took our little female Pom, Katie, for a walk and Rickie and myself then followed. Almost magically Rickie walked along the sidewalk and seemed to grasp the idea. When my wife decided to turn around and head home Mr. Rickie kept on walking, stubbornness again, but kept to the boundries of the sidewalk we walked around two blocks circling back home. After that Mr. Rickie enjoyed his walks and always got excited when he knew he was going to go for one. He still went for a walk weather permitting even up to the last couple weeks.

One other moment Sally and I will never forget is the first time he wagged his tail. When he first arrived at our home, his tail would hang down almost
constantly only occasionally coming up for air. Sally kept telling him that one day he was going to wag his tail but we often wondered. One day sure enough his tail popped up and started to wag but it was like he quite didn’t know what to do with. It slightly resembled a drunk bumblebee trying to
fly or if you remember the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine did her dance, it was something similar to that. It might go left, it might go right, and in no
predictable manner, but wag it did.

Mr. Rickie developed a lesion some time back that continued to grow. In the last few months Rickie aged quite a bit and the size of the lesion grew. The vet told us that it could be a severe sinus infection or a tumor, which are almost always malignant in small dogs. After a 4 week round of antibiotics we returned to the vet to discover that the lesion had grew even more and had pushed down into his palette where it was beginning to obstruct his breathing. This last week his breathing became very labored and accompanied by an almost constant “wheezing”. I took him to the vet Friday and the news was not good. By Sunday he was having a hard time with normal breathing and bearing in mind his age and refusing to put him through radiation therapy or any other invasive procedures Sally and I decided to end Mr. Rickies extreme discomfort before it advanced into the suffering stage. We did not reach this decision easily but wanted what was best for Mr. Rickie.

We were honored to have Mr. Rickie and hope that we gave him 4 ½ years of love and attention that he otherwise might not have had had we not adopted him. He will be missed greatly and always hold a special place in our hearts. I will be sending a check in his memory shortly please notify me as to the mailing address for the check.