We Interrupt The Story Of This Death Rattle

There’s been entirely too much death talk the last few days.

So, a little more can’t hurt.

We adopted Quincy from the pound on April 2, 2005. He was six months old and had the most energy I’d ever seen any dog have, ever. In my life. Ever. We brought our two (at the time) children with us to choose a dog that we hoped would be a good guard dog for us in our new house (because God knows we needed one).

Brad wanted Quincy. I didn’t.

I wanted a different breed. I remember there were a lot of blue heeler and husky mixes at the pound when we went, and I wanted one of them. Quincy’s breed was listed as dalmatian on his card, but it was obvious by the shape of his head that he was part pit bull. The pound had an automatic kill policy for pit bulls; Quincy was saved by his spots. And, of course, his eyes. He had one blue and one brown. How could anyone not love that?

In the end, it was his energy that won me over. We took him outside on a leash to a big, fenced yard where you could play with the dogs, try them out. He ran. So fast. He was so happy to be out of that kennel. He played keep-away forever. To the point that when we had decided that, yes, this was the dog for us, and we were ready to take him home, we couldn’t catch him. (Little did we know this was Quincy’s WAY. If he ever got away from you, sorry, but you were screwed.)

Right away, we thought he would be good with the kids. He was aware that they were there and that they were smaller and fragile (Kieran was almost four, and Anneke not quite 10 months), but he wasn’t afraid of them. He never knocked them down, and even when we had babies in the house, he understood. He was always gentle and protective.

We all started calling him Quince pretty immediately after we got him. When Anneke started talking shortly thereafter, the closest she could come was “Toonce.” (Not THE Toonces, of course. Pronounced instead with an /oo/ phoneme like in the word book, not loop.)

He could also jump our six-foot fence like it was nothing. We started having to keep him on a leash just to take him out to pee. He got away a couple times, and he was GONE. Once, he stayed away for about three days. He showed up in our backyard with cuts and what looked like puncture wounds all over his back. We have no idea where he went or what he did, but he was exhausted when he got home.

Quincy started seeming sick, just moving slowly and not really eating, last week. The vet knew immediately that he was in critical condition; he was already in kidney failure by the time he got there. He died Sunday, probably from leptospirosis, a fluke bacterial infection. (He had been vaccinated against it, but apparently, the vaccine protects against just four of the seven strains.)

This is our sweet Toonce. He would have been five this month. We will miss him.

Tagged as: Anneke, Bradley, Dallas, Death, House, Kieran, Sad, Sick