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A Farewell to Merlin
Apologies if you came here looking for our "usual" Airedale pages, but I
have temporarily co-opted the page for Merlin.
If you came here looking for our thos pages, they may be accessed
with links at the bottome of this page
click for larger image
I have removed the less-than-happy details from this section.
To make a long, very sad, and -- to me -- extremely tragic story a lot shorter and easier to take, here is a quick summary.
In the middle of July, Merlin appeared to be a happy, healthy, active 7-year-old Airedale who had no intention of slowing down. He regularly wrestled with Obi, played with both Obi and Sarah, and did everything anyone could want him to. But he was all Airedale, and never let us forget it, either.
Then a little later in July we thought he had taken a fall and hurt his left knee. From that point, the news went from not great, to not good, to far worse, and in a little less than a month Merlin went from his former state almost to the point of death from advanced "end-stage" bladder cancer which spread rapidly thoroughout his body.
At this point Merlin came back enough to tell us that he was in constant pain, and that it was "Time."
So on August 20th, 2003, Merlin, Cathy, and I made that dreaded final trip to the vet, and at about 5:15 in the afternoon, he died with his head in my hand, looking up into my eyes.
The hole left in our hearts is so great that words cannot express the sorrow we feel. Our only comfort is that he is not longer in pain as he has now crossed over the Rainbow Bridge.
I have tried to write up a one-page story of Merlin's life, but have been thoroughly unsuccessful. The story is no longer a web page, but is a 'pdf' file (readable using the Adobe Acrobat reader, which you may download free from adobe.com if you don't already have it). The story of "Merlin's Tale" is accessible from this link
It took a lot longer than expected, but here are our previous (pre-crash) web pages ...
with lots of repairs and a few gaps.
(Many apologies if your personal favorite is no longer available)