RIP Ranch Rui

June 25, 2023

Hello again,

Well, we lost a dear, old friend this week.  Our oldest dog, Rui, passed away on Sunday morning, after a short illness, as they say in the obituary pages.  More specifically, he quit wanting to run or to even walk very much about a year ago and would cut short or not even partake in walks with our other two dogs, Ela & Willow.  Usually, I could still get him to loop up around the boss's new house that we were working on in the evening, but he would immediately turn back once we got to the other side of it.  The girls would charge on, of course, but he would sniff his way back to the garden, eating who knows how much cat shit along the way, plus whatever other ranch delicacies that he could find.  In time, even this changed and he would only wander around when let out to poop and pee and not do too much.  Quite often in the last few months, he would just sit on the couch and enjoy looking out the front screen door and smelling the wind.  He was a trained hunting dog, not gotten at the usual age of two months but more like five or six, after extensive bird-hunting training.  Then, his owners finally got him but never got him out much, usually leaving him confined to his crate, only to be extra rambunctious when let out.  We got Rui, then named Jet, at eleven months of age after this couple's son suggested to them that we would be a good place for him to land before he destroyed the whole house...legend has it that he dug through a very expensive leather couch once just to get to a bone that had dropped behind it!  At the time, we had three dogs: an English Pointer and two Vizslas, just like Rui.  It was love at first sight and we instantly had a pack of dogs.  That was the fall of 2014 and we had just purchased Ela in the spring so that our younger dog wouldn't be alone when our older dog inevitably passed away.  But, just like that, we were up to four dogs and quite enjoyed it at the time.  We still owned a feed mill and pet food store and they were there all the time with us and everyone just loved them.  That's how we got Rui given to us and, quite honestly, the same thing happened with Willow and we got her from some customers at eight months before she had completely run them ragged!  So, time passed, our oldest dog, Lotte, died in 2015; then, right before we sold our business in June of 2020, our dog, Luna, passed away; and that left Rui, Ela & Willow to venture out West with us six months later.  Only upon becoming Ranch Rui, did he start to lose some of his robotic-like behavior from all the heavy training and begin to truly relax.  For two and half years he rarely left this place and truly loved life!

So, as we noticed Rui slowing down, I finally began to see his stool really diminish in size in the last few weeks, followed by some real trouble getting around.  Then, a little, fatty tumor that had been on his neck for the last year or more just took off and grew to the size of a beef liver, wrapping around the front of his neck.  He took it like a champ but we could really tell that he was uncomfortable, still he did continue to eat Erin's homemade dog meals for the first few days.  But, his appetite slowly went and then he was only going out once a day, having to be carried, and we just knew what we were facing.  Interestingly, I had advance knowledge of this, in a way, because once the boss moved up to her new house, I began taking the dogs next-door to get them used to the new house that we will be moving into.  Not once would Rui go into it.  The girls would rip-tear all through the place, but he would just stand in the doorway and look at me, smile on his face and tail wagging, but the face said very plainly that, "I'm never going to live in this place and I don't want anything to do with it."  After our two busy weeks of taking care of the ranch while the boss was away, this came up and really threw us for a loop.  It was expected, but, as is always the case, totally unexpected when the point in time is finally reached.  So, he died on the couch, with everyone around him on Sunday morning and we laid him outside, wrapped up in a blanket, to be buried with the rising sun.  We disinterred two dogs and five cats from our former home of 25 years upon moving out here and now Rui is the first that we've lost since then, but he was buried up on Boot Hill, which overlooks the pond and the mesa, with his seven kith & kin and nearly a dozen dogs and cats that were the boss's over the last 30 years.  It's a hard thing to do, but gets easier with repetition, to say goodbye to an old friend and lay them in the ground.  But, we've found them all a resting place with one hell of a view!

So, as usual, I have another series of photos for your perusal from this week on the ranch.  First up, an artistic rendering of a closeup of Rui from a few days before his death.  Next, two shots of our terrible little terrorist of a kitten, Daisy, napping and wide awake.  Then, a shot of one of the younger kittens playing peekaboo in a Tibetan prayer bowl.  Next, a series of six shots from Rui's final days and his final trip to the burying ground: first, the shape of things four days before his death; then, two shots from his grave site, one looking towards the mesa, the other back towards the house; next, two shots of our deceased little buddy, on his final ride and then in his final resting place; and, finally, the rock cairn that I made to go over top of him.  Then, a sea of paints getting some water, seen far enough away to blur the lines between them.  Next, three shots of the beautiful cholla that are all blooming out here right now.  And, finally, an impromptu gate that I made to seal off our old driveway once and for all...after seeing the first shot, the boss said it was adorable, so I knew I needed to change it immediately and came up with the second version.

That's all this time!