a parting of the ways

In November of 2000 I made another decision that would really change my life. I had to decide what I was going to do with Clemmy. She was my friend, my angel, but she to had problems do to the situations that we’d been in together. She couldn’t go on a trip with out going to the bathroom on route. She got scared of things easily, and people who yelled made her really nervous and jumpy. I didn’t know how to deal with it, and with everything that she had been threw, I didn’t think it was fare to work her.

I had been starting to give her mor and mor freedom, I stopped taking her places, and stopped making her behave like a guide dog. She began to relax after that, and I thought about just keeping her as a pet, but she was having mor problems. Ever sense i had gotten her she had had constant medical problems, and those problems were isolating. She needed mor medication, and I didn’t have any money.

I finally made the decision that broke my heart. I knew I couldn’t afford to keep her as a pet, and I knew that she could no longer work as a guide dog so I chose to retire her. I called South Eastern Guide dogs, and set a class date for me to get a new dog, and then I called my mother to see if she could come and get clemmy.

A day or two later my mother showed up to get clemmy. I think that that was one of the hardest days of my life. But, I let her go. I had to, I had to get things prepared to bring a new dog into the house, and I needed to learn to deal with the pain of losing a dog who was my best friend in a sense.

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