RIP My love, My Ralph.

Do you remember when we met? I had come to the west valley animal shelter, and I saw you before you saw me. You were by yourself in a little cage at the end of the long corridor. When you saw me, you tried to bite your way through the wires. I stopped and took a moment to fall in love with you. Oh, you were tiny. A comma made of black fur, punctuating my love with licks and nips. Our affair was destined to be a run on sentence, on and on and on and on and on and on. But then, it was just the beginning of the story and you could sit comfortably and very dignified in the palm of my hand while you emanated gratitude and warmth and puppy love. There was a large wound on the top of your head that was caked in dirt and dried blood, and you had a slight wobble in your walk because the people at the shelter said you had been kicked very hard. They put you on a table and someone tried to feed you a French fry, but you refused it, because that would have meant you would have had to stop staring at me. you never wanted to stop staring at me. You were a master at seduction, even then, at just a few weeks old.

We went home together and you were scared. I had to bathe you in the sink and you hated it! You were even smaller without fur. The dried blood and fleas were gone, and then it was just you, wet and perfect and tiny and soon asleep between my giant platform shoes. It was the 90s after all.

I named you after Ralph Fiennes. “The English Patient” had just come out. You were badly hurt but I was determined to be your Juliette Binoche and nurse you back to health, my head on your chest, as you told me all the great stories of the war and your love. The vets didn’t believe you’d get better, but I held you day and night and cried softly into your fur and fed you nutrical from my fingers and you grew and suddenly, seemingly overnight, you were my big dog. My big boy. My Ralph.

You would sleep on the bed with me, in my single days, and you would put your head on the pillow, the rest of your dog body under the covers, just like a man. Before I was married, you were my dog husband. When we moved to the big house, you were horrified, and you barked at the movers like you were defending your homeland, but you grew to love the new house, and then your new dad, and begrudgingly, your new dog siblings.

I am not sure what I am going to do without you. My love. My Ralph. I don’t know yet. I am happy you are no longer in pain. All the money in the world couldn’t cure the passage of time. Where are you floating now? Among all the famous people in heaven? I bet it’s big scene up there. They should let you into the VIP lounge. Just tell them who your mother is.

I grieve for you so, my love. My big dog. Who was so afraid of the wind. When I petted you, I could hear the deep satisfaction that welled up inside you. Your great dog sighs were profound. You would shake the floors. When you were very sick, I would try to ease the pain by lying next to you in your bed, my whole body encircling yours, thinking if only I could absorb the pain, take the disease into myself and take it out of you. We can only do so much, we can only do so much on earth, my love.

I am convinced I will meet you again someday, when this is all over. When there are no more jobs or days or nights or appointments or things or shows or age or sun or moon or trips or life or anything. It will be just us, and there will be a field and you will run to me, with no pain in your hips. You will run to me and knock me down.

Ralph Puppy

Ralph BW

Margaret and Ralph

DJ Ralph

Ralph Senior

Blue Ralph

Ralph and Auriana

541 thoughts on “RIP My love, My Ralph.

  1. Spot on with this write-up, I actually assume this website wants way more consideration. I?ll in all probability be again to learn far more, thanks for that info.

  2. Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point. You definitely know what youre talking about, why throw away your intelligence on just posting videos to your site when you could be giving us something enlightening to read?

  3. Hi! Quick question that’s totally off topic. Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My web site looks weird when viewing from my iphone. I’m trying to find a template or plugin that might be able to correct this issue. If you have any recommendations, please share. Thanks!

  4. I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own blog and was curious what all is needed to get set up? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny? I’m not very web smart so I’m not 100 sure. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

  5. Hello just wanted to give you a quick heads up and let you know a few of the images aren’t loading properly. I’m not sure why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different browsers and both show the same results.

  6. Have you ever considered creating an e-book or guest authoring on other websites? I have a blog centered on the same topics you discuss and would really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my viewers would appreciate your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail.

  7. Hey there! Do you know if they make any plugins to help with SEO? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results. If you know of any please share. Kudos!

  8. I cherished as much as you’ll obtain performed proper here. The caricature is attractive, your authored subject matter stylish. however, you command get got an shakiness over that you wish be handing over the following. sick unquestionably come further before again as precisely the similar nearly very steadily within case you protect this increase.

  9. I have seen loads of useful points on your website about pcs. However, I’ve got the viewpoint that lap tops are still not nearly powerful more than enough to be a good selection if you usually do projects that require loads of power, such as video modifying. But for internet surfing, word processing, and the majority of other frequent computer work they are just fine, provided you can’t mind the small screen size. Many thanks for sharing your ideas.

  10. Its such as you read my mind! You seem to understand so much approximately this, such as you wrote the ebook in it or something. I feel that you simply could do with a few to drive the message house a little bit, but other than that, that is excellent blog. A great read. I will definitely be back.

  11. I’m not sure why but this blog is loading incredibly slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a problem on my end? I’ll check back later on and see if the problem still exists.

  12. The following time I learn a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually thought youd have something attention-grabbing to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you might fix in case you werent too busy in search of attention.

  13. Hello There. I found your blog using msn. This is a really well written article. I?ll make sure to bookmark it and come back to read more of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I will certainly return.

  14. hello there and thank you for your info – I’ve definitely picked up something new from right here. I did however expertise a few technical points using this site, as I experienced to reload the web site many times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your hosting is OK? Not that I’m complaining, but slow loading instances times will very frequently affect your placement in google and could damage your high quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords. Well I am adding this RSS to my e-mail and could look out for much more of your respective fascinating content. Ensure that you update this again very soon..

  15. I’m impressed, I must say. Really rarely do I encounter a weblog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Your thought is excellent; the difficulty is something that not enough individuals are talking intelligently about. I am very completely satisfied that I stumbled across this in my search for one thing referring to this.

  16. After research a couple of of the blog posts on your website now, and I really like your approach of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark website listing and shall be checking again soon. Pls check out my website online as properly and let me know what you think.

  17. Does your site have a contact page? I’m having problems locating it but, I’d like to send you an email. I’ve got some suggestions for your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward to seeing it improve over time.

  18. I do enjoy the way you have presented this specific situation and it does present us some fodder for consideration. However, coming from everything that I have witnessed, I just simply wish as other remarks pack on that men and women stay on issue and don’t embark upon a tirade associated with the news of the day. Still, thank you for this excellent point and whilst I can not go along with it in totality, I value your viewpoint.

  19. The very heart of your writing whilst appearing reasonable originally, did not really work properly with me personally after some time. Somewhere throughout the paragraphs you actually were able to make me a believer unfortunately just for a short while. I nevertheless have got a problem with your jumps in assumptions and one might do nicely to help fill in all those gaps. In the event you actually can accomplish that, I will surely be impressed.

  20. I have been surfing on-line greater than 3 hours these days, but I never found any fascinating article like yours. It?s pretty value sufficient for me. In my opinion, if all website owners and bloggers made excellent content as you probably did, the web can be a lot more useful than ever before.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *