I hadn’t thought about loss when I brought them home, two instead of one to help ease the pain of loss of the one before. LeRoy. I never thought I’d recover. Two puppies were a handful, but once trained, were the best of boys, best friends, best mates a girl could have. Through two major back surgeries and more vet visits than I’d like to recount, so many times I thought I’d lose them, but now. . . it’s real.
Randy came into my life in March of 2014, just a day before St. Patrick’s Day, with his brother, Trevor, and flipped my world upside down. They were born just ten days before LeRoy passed, the same year, so I thought it was fate. I had vowed “NO MORE” because I couldn’t take the emotional pain, but when the quiet is so loud, you’ll do anything to stop the pain.
There was a random vet in our office, subbing for the main, and on the day we said goodbye to LeRoy, she mentioned having a friend nearby who had just had a litter. I shook my head no, but accepted her card. By the next day I’d determined two would have to take the place of one.
It felt like fate, this random vet, who also had a Frenchie herself, who happened to have a friend who’d just had a litter ten days prior. We met them when they were ready and Randy and Trevor chose us. . . it would be four more weeks until they came home and deep into the GOT series, we called them The Little Lords.
They’ve been through so much in the last ten years. Divorce, selling my house, moving once, twice, three and then four times total until we ended up down the mountain. It was a whole new world for them. A backyard all to themselves. Grass they’d never had up on the  mountain. . . and heat and humidity and fleas that kept them indoors. We had to adjust, it was mid-summer 2024, and we’d all lost too much weight from the change. But by the new year, we were settling in. By spring, all was looking good. But in May of 2025, Randy had a patch of sores under his fur on his upper back, at the base of his neck. I didn’t know they were there at first. His hair was so thick there and he wasn’t scratching at them. I found them by accident when I found out we also had fleas. We’d never really had to deal with fleas on the mountain, save for a few here and there, but this was different. I immediately put them on flea meds and blocked off the grass so they couldn’t reach them. I thought Randy was having a reaction to the bites. But once the fleas weren’t a problem any longer, the sores on Randy started spreading; the ones that remained weren’t really healing.
I started medicated baths last July, after many vet visits and tests came back normal. We thought maybe it was allergies, so we changed his food and continued the baths. . . but the sores kept coming. New spots, taking over systematically, side by side, a little and then a lot; the previous posts still not entirely healing. Two baths a week and bloody sores ripping out chunks of his hair. So many tears shed, but Randy was a trooper, he wasn’t itching or acting like he was really in any pain.
More tests were done after food swaps and allergies were ruled out. His bloodwork came back normal. I thought it was Cushing’s, but his levels were fine. The vet recommended a dermatologist at one point, but I wasn’t sure that was the right choice. We put him on antibiotics to help the sores and more and more tests revealed nothing. It was as if his organs were failing and the his body was the symptom, but what did I know. At the beginning of this year we finally tried Prednisone, which LeRoy had been on for his skin issues for much of his life. Randy and Trevor had never dealt with skin issues; ear infections, eyes issues, and back and neck issues, yes–but never skin. After a month of prednisone, there was little improvement, in fact, he was getting weaker. I was scrambling, wishing now I’d taken him to the dermatologist sooner, but he was truly uncomfortable now, miserable even. Trevor kept looking at me like he knew something I didn’t. And he probably did. And after a week of watching him lose bladder control, eyesight and the ability to get up or down, I finally had to make the hardest decision of my life. . . one of many, and I cried for days about it, while cuddling Randy and Trevor on the couch.
Each day I’d watch him like a hawk. If he showed any improvement, I’d second-guess and doubt the decision. It wasn’t until last Wednesday, it became too obvious to put off: he was in pain, and I was going to have to make the call 😔
Tears fall from my ugly-cry face as I type this now, watching Trevor stretch in the sun at my feet, without his brother next to him in the heat patch.
It’s been a week. Friday, March 20th, 2026, twelve years after Randy became one of my Bobes, I had to say goodbye.
It’s been so quiet ever since, it’s just not the same, but I know I couldn’t allow Randy to suffer even one more day.
Trevor and I are still trying to adjust. He’s doing better than I am, or at least I hope he is.
NOTES:
1. There are probably many errors in this post. . . I couldn’t go back to edit it without crying, so I leave it as-is for now.
2. I don’t have a mailing list here any longer. You can subscribe to my Substack for updates, as I post more regularly there than here. I originally shared on Instagram: here and here
3. I truly appreciate your kind words and condolences on both of my Instagram posts and my DMs. I don’t have the capacity to respond to each individually at the moment, but know I’ve read and appreciate you immensely 🩷
