As a pet owner, you rue the day when this will happen...(warning...this is going to be long.)

Many of you have met my parents' dog, Smores. Smores was the friendly dog (not the German shepherd that scared the living crap out of anyone who saw her on the back porch). Well, Smores is in her early teens, and it looks like she'll have only two more days to live.

She's got severe problems...bad hips, bad legs, may even have tumors and all that lovely stuff. But aside from pacing around the house constantly and trying to hide a lot, my parents say she never acts as though she's in pain. You can pet her hips and anywhere else, and she'd never back away or yelp or cry. So, I don't think she's been hurting all these years, and I think my parents agree with that.

Anyway, in the last year, her hips and legs have gotten so bad that she will fall down on occasion. But she'd always get up and carry on. Never made a sound when she fell either...except for the clump! when she hit the floor. But, I guess on Thursday, she fell really bad in the yard and really, really screwed up her back legs. So much so that she hasn't been able to go outside in two days, because of the stairs. The problem is, she's a bitch in every sense of the word. If my parents would have tried to pick her up and carry her outside, she'd bite them. If you try to force her anywhere, she growls and bares her teeth. She's a grumpy old woman who ain't gotta do anything for anyone.

So, I guess my Dad decided that it was time today to take her in. But, given that she wouldn't go anywhere near a vehicle and he couldn't pick her up, he called the vet to find out how to sedate her. He gave her two Benadryls on the doc's orders. Nothing. "Give two more." Still nothing.

Obviously, they were stuck. So my Dad went to the vet and got these pills to give to her...five of them in half an hour's time. They will knock her out, and then they can take her to the vet to "finish the job." I don't know what the pills are, but basically, once my Dad gives her the pills, there's no turning back. The plan, I guess, is that this will go down Monday.

Even though I haven't been living there regularly since 1999, I'm pretty sad...I'm actually having a hard time not crying. Smores always seemed to be so, so happy whenever I came to visit. I will miss her, if only because she's the only dog I've ever me that could smile. She would put her ears down, squint her eyes and actually smile. It was the silliest thing, but she really could do it. And of course, I'll miss her patented way to get you to pet her when you first arrived, and that was to basically shove herself between your legs, basically using her face to pry your legs apart so she could get your attention and stand right under you. It was the goofiest thing...but it was Smores' way of doing things.

I still remember getting her...we got her at the animal shelter down in Chicago Ridge, and she had a sister with her. We tried to convince my parents to get the sister also, but it didn't work. Then, we basically argued the whole way home about what to name her. Everyone in the car, with the exception of my Dad, wanted to name her "Autumn," because she was a mixture of brown and yellows and slight reds with some black...it was a bit of a stretch, but it was the biggest consensus that we'd had to that point. But Dad shot it down. So, then we thought of Smores, because of the browns, blacks and whites throughout. That was fine, Dad said, and it stuck. Later, Tim and I would complain to Gerard about the "Autumn" name, which he also thought was an excellent dog name. Thus, his dog currently is named "Autumn."

Of course, there are plenty of Smores stories I could tell. She was afraid of any loud noise--fireworks, thunder, trucks rumbling down the street (though she got used to that one). She even got smart enough to know when a thunderstorm was coming. Just the right kind of smell, cloudiness and windiness, and she'd be pacing the house, looking for somewhere to hide...a full 30 minutes to an hour before it would even be raining. She was a great "weatherman" that way.

She also had this goofy way of "speaking" when you told her to "speak" to get a treat. She wouldn't bark...she'd just clap her mouth shut and exhale...kind of a "hup!" sound...if any of you know the 1960s Chicago kids TV puppet show "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," think of the bird from that, which talked by tapping or clacking its beak together...that was Smores' way of "speaking." It was so weird and so freakin' funny the first time she did it.

Then, of course, there's the story about Smores and her blast-furnace stomach. Our dogs, up until Smores, were always kept on the back porch when we left the house. Well, Smores revolutionized that by forcing my parents' hand. She had horrible, horrible separation anxiety. Most dogs will tear the walls/doors up, etc., make a mess and other things. Well, Smores tore the screen door up all right...a door with screen on it from top to bottom. She tore the screen off and ATE every square inch of that screen. Ate it. More miraculously, she did not cut herself, either externally or internally, and even more miraculously...she DIGESTED ALL OF IT. There was not a single piece of it to be found when she pooped. NONE.

She chewed with precision, we would come to learn, which is probably why she survived eating the screen door. After she was allowed to stay in the house, she'd chew Kleenexes into teeny-tiny bits...she might eat some of it, but I guess she preferred iron to fiber. She was also the first dog I've ever seen that was able to unwrap her Christmas presents (she got a bag/box of treats every year) without destroying them or the paper. If you started a little tear in the paper for her, she'd have them out in no time. She was remarkable.

I should drive down and say goodbye to her...but I don't know if I'd be able to deal well with it. And I don't want to get everyone else all worked up. They still have to make the ultimate decision and everything. It was hard enough to say goodbye to Rusty after he just stopped breathing in our house, and he was already dead at that point. But, I...I don't know...

And my Mom says my Dad is having a really hard time with it too, which is understandable. So here's to Smores...I'll miss you, girl.