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Molly at our house in Doylestown, Pennsylvania; Circa 2005-2006...

 

Also at the Doylestown house in 2005-2006, obviously around Christmas based on that thing Molly's wearing on her neck...

 

Doylestown house; New Year's Day 2007...



Again, note the CRT television; My dad was not quite as stingy as my aunt and uncle when it came to abstaining from buying the latest technology, but we did not get our first HDTV until September 2007! I would say that plasma screens started appearing in about 2002-2003, and I immediately started bugging my dad to buy one; He refused, saying that the prices would come down as the technology became cheaper. You know what? He was right! Now, almost twenty years later, we have three flat panel HDTVs in our house (family room, master bedroom, and my room) and a slowly-failing 61" Samsung DLP TV in the basement...

 

These pictures were all taken at our old house in Furlong, and in that neighborhood, between December 2008 and the spring of 2009...

 

During the last year and a half or so of her life, Molly needed this homemade ramp to make it up the front step into the house; This picture is from November 2008...

 

She started using a ramp to get into my mom's minivan in late 2004 or so; This is a picture of her in the van, circa 2008...

 

Molly and Sandy in the family room of the Furlong house; December 2008...



Sandy was about seven months younger than Molly, but Molly outlived her by almost a year; Sandy did not live to see her 14th birthday and was put to sleep due to failing health, not even a month after I took this picture

 

FUN FACT: Sandy was born on July 4th, 1995; My cousins got to name her. They wanted her to have a "showdog" name, so they named her "Sandstorm Independence" since she was born on the 4th; Obviously, it was a lot easier to just call her Sandy...

Sandy headed to the Rainbow Bridge sometime in early-to-mid-January of 2009, but I forget the exact date.

 

Molly really mellowed out in 2008-2009; I don't think she was any less of an alpha dog, but rather she just got old and began thinking like Roger Murtaugh...

 

The last time she actually attacked a dog was in the fall of 2007, not long after we moved into the Furlong house; My neighbor's 7-year old daughter was walking the family's young Bearded Collie, who I believe was like 2 or 3 at the time...? The Bearded Collie, named Jersey, was very friendly and just crossed the Rainbow Bridge himself in 2019 or so (I believe he was 15 or 16). Anyway, Jersey walked up to Molly, and was promptly bitten on the cheek. Jersey ran away yelping, and that was the last time we tried to have those two near each other...

 

By 2008, she just didn't care anymore and would peacefully mingle with other dogs; This picture was taken in the Furlong neighborhood, in late 2008 or early 2009...

 

Furlong; March 2009...

 

This was taken in the backyard of our old house in Furlong; It was sometime in December 2009, probably about two weeks before we put Molly to sleep...

 

This is where things start to get VERY emotional; These are the last pictures I have of Molly, taken by my mom less than 24 hours before we put her to sleep. You can tell just by looking at her facial expression that she was ready to leave this earth

Molly was always up for a cuddle, but I had never seen her behave like this EVER in fifteen years; She wedged herself under my arm and plopped the front half of her body in my lap, and just stayed like this for ten or fifteen minutes...


December 22nd, 2009:

 

The winter of 2009-2010 was one of the worst on record, absolutely brutal in terms of snow, and that is probably part of the reason we put Molly to sleep when we did; Had we had a virtually nonexistent winter like we had in 2019-2020, the weather likely wouldn't have negatively effected Molly's health and we probably would have put it off until January or February 2010...

Anyway, I just happened to be out in the yard and noticed that the miserably cold weather had frozen the pawprints Molly had made in the snow just days before she passed; I immediately grabbed my camera and started taking pictures!

 

Just came across some pictures from the day we adopted Mandy, back in September 2018!

 

In the PetValu at the adoption day event where we got her...

 

In my lap, in the backseat of my mom’s car, on the drive home from PetValu...

 

In the front yard minutes after we got her home...