Category: Pets

For the second time in just over a year, we had to say goodbye to another family member/pet, Apollo. Apollo was 15.5 when we had to say goodye, which was a good number of years for a large Chihauha/Pug mix.

Just like his brother Zeus, Apollo was a rescue that we adopted from a foster home, instead of a local humane society. Apollo was actually named Rudy when we got him, but we disliked that name, so we took the time to wean him off the old name and onto the new one.

He was a skinny little boy almost 2 years old, rescued originally from a puppy mill, so he had trust issues, especially with men. He took to Lorie and Jenna much quicker than Matthew or myself, but we eventually got him comfortable with us picking him up.  Having Zeus around was a great help as Apollo would cling to him if he got a bit stressed out. Zeus tolorated him but you coudl tell someimes that Zeus was anoyned when Apollo would get into bed with him instead of using his own bed.

We will mis the walks to the dog park with both pups and the happy dance that Apollo woudl do each time we came home, even if we were gone for only an hour or so.

It was a sad day on October 22 2022, when we had to say goodbye to our pup Zeus. He was 16.5 years old when we had to let him go because of declining health and puppy dimentia. I never have had to do that before, even though we have had many differnet pups since I was little. That was always something my dad handled, even having the ‘we sent him to a farm’ reply of where a specif pup had gone.

We had Zues for over 14 years, rescueing him from Hinsdale Humane Society, in Hinsdale IL. He had been in a house with a cat and when the family moved to a smaller place, they decided to give him up, lucky for us. Jenna and I went over to look at pups (our first) while she was in highschool and immediately took an interest in Zeus. He was very shy and stayed in the back of his pen, as we tried to take to him. We were finally able to coax him out of the pen so we coudl take him ouside to the small grassy area of the Humane Society, and play with him as we sat on the picnic table. We had a great time, although short, getting to know his personality, which was very playful once he understood that we were there to see him and not to leave him.

A few days later I went back to HHS and adopted him, intending to surprise Jenna and Matt. I loaded Zeus into our Saturn Vue, for his first ride as a family member. This was early afternoon, so I headed right over to Downers Grove South to pickup Jenna after volleyball practice. Jen did not know that we were going to make the adoption decision so quickly, so she was very surprise to see Zues in the back seat when we picked he up.

We had many enjoyable years with Zeus in Illinois, and he was able to live in 2 additionl states, Arizona and Colorado, when we moved on through our family journey. He was a wonderful, goofy pup, and we miss him very much.