I am laying on the couch with my dog, Mallon.  We have had her for 4 months now? I have the receipt, somewhere.  A few months after Flash died, unexpectedly, we were searching for a new dog. I kept putting it off, in fear of the feeling of "replacing" Flash,  and Sarah was sending me pictures everyday of rescue dogs to get. See Flash was a special dog.  He was short, he had droopy ears, he drooled and when we first got him he had a hard/stubborn time walking a single mile.  He was stinky, he shed all over the place and he liked to go on nose bound, people loving, adventures from time to time.

I haven't liked dogs all that much in the past, I mean I liked them well enough but I never wanted to live with one, I never wanted to have to vacuum everyday because of one.  But Flash was a special dog.  I brought him in to my work a few times to introduce him to some of my favorite residents.  I became, rather quickly may I add, proud that he was mine.  I lay ed on the floor with him and didn't care that that meant dog hair coated clothing.  I enjoyed having him lay on the couch with me (poor Nubs, I'm sorry it took me so long), I fell in love with this dog.  His ears were my favorite, and he was so handsome.

Sarah called me at work on the house phone one night, which she never does and said that she wanted to bring Flash to the vet, that he was acting funny and not moving.  He didn't budge for food or even water, which he was obsessed with, he wouldn't get up to go outside.  She had a few hours before taken him and Nubs for a dog walk, so we assumed that he ate something that didn't quite agree with him, or that he somehow ingested a pair of our underwear. So we would wait until morning and if he was still acting funny then we would take him in.
A day or two had passed, maybe even three and he was acting like his normal self.  Then he had another one of those episodes.  Meanwhile, in the world outside of our house, one of my favorite residents had been battling with pneumonia during the same week.  My emotions were already trying to prepare me for the heart break of my friend. Sarah came with me to my place of work to be with Blue Jay, I'll call her, I knew she was dieing, I didn't want to miss a minute of her last days.  I was in love with her too. 
When we returned home that night, about 11, he still wasn't moving.  We took his temperature, 98 something, and after reading on the inter web about appropriate dog temperatures, we knew he was in some sort of danger.  I wrapped him in a blanket, put him in the back seat on my lap and we drove to one animal clinic which didn't have an xray machine so we drove to another.  After they took an Xray, and an ultrasound and drew out the contents of his abdomen, within seconds, we realized the depth of his pain, of his injury.  The tests revealed that he had tumors on his liver and spleen, too large to do anything about and too late because they had already burst.  We went over surgery options, taking him home options, and finally, decided to spend our last hours hugging him, loving him and crying with each other. Deciding to let him go was the hardest decision I've ever had to make.  Not jail, not rehab, not dirty streets, not family dysfunction, not every relationship I've ever had to end, has ever compared to the feeling I had that night.  He was laying on the table, with an IV in one foot, just breathing and looking at us.  Licking his lips and looking around, and we couldn't stop crying. I didn't want to say goodbye.  I didn't want to be without him.  I didn't want him to go.
We left with him in a box.
I wanted to bring him to my mother's and bury him.  I also didn't want to miss Blue Jay's passing.  I was so fucking torn between the death and dieing of two beings that I loved so dearly.  Blue Jay would have wanted me to go, Blue Jay loved animals.  Blue Jay met Flash.  So we drove to mom's the next morning, we put some things in his little long box, my brother Tristian read a letter he had written to Flash, and we buried him.  It was all so god damn surreal.  I week later and I still couldn't believe that had happened.
I returned to our home in Maine and I went back to work. That very day I clocked in and went to visit Blue Jay, I was so surprised that she was still alive.  I was so selfishly grateful that she was still alive. She passed that night, and all I could think of was, she waited for me to say goodbye. Not ten minutes after the nurse officially declared she had no heartbeat, I heard her daughter walking down the hallway.   I knew her walk, I knew her footsteps.  I walked into the hallway and tried my hardest to keep my cool.  I was so confused as to the right thing to do, do I tell her before she enters the room, do I let her walk into the room on her own...I started crying and told her Blue Jay was gone.  We hugged and we cried and then I left her alone to cry over her mother.

to be continued...