Daisy Doodle 4/21/05 - 7/24/13
Monday, July 29, 2013
Daisy has been with us from the day we moved aboard Seas the Day in 2008. She has been a part of everything we have done on the boat. She was born in 2005 and was a wonderful companion from the day I picked her up at a farm in rural Ohio. She died unexpectedly on July 24, 2013. We will miss her immensely.
Daisy contracted an infection called Leptospirosis in June. She also had a reaction to Advantix flea and tick medicine. She was sick, got almost back to her normal self, got sick again, and just when we thought she was better she died in her sleep on July 24, 2013.
Of course we are devastated. Daisy wasn’t a pet. She was family. The drawing above was done by a cruiser friend of Daisy’s here at Sunset Bay Marina. (More people know Daisy than know us.) Mary, aboard Paper Moon, drew a picture we will cherish of Daisy’s favorite activity......sitting on a bench with Mark. I think Daisy loved benches because people would stop to pet her and comment on what a cute dog she was. Wherever we went, Daisy would look for a bench and wait for people to come by. Mark remarked that for the past few years he didn’t “walk” Daisy. She chose the route and when she was tired of walking, she would turn around and find a bench. They would sit there for awhile and when she was ready to go back to the boat, she’d hop off and start back. The restaurant at the marina often has music and she loved sitting on the bench in front of the patio where the bands played. One time a jazz musician serenaded Daisy on his saxophone with “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
Daisy enjoyed walking on beaches, especially in the Bahamas. She was cremated and perhaps we will spread some of her ashes on her favorite beaches when we return there next winter. That will be a hard thing to do.
Some people think it’s not fair to a dog to be living on a boat. We know that Daisy was happy wherever she was living. Why? Because all she cared about was that she was with us. She craved human touch and when she wasn’t sleeping she had her head on someone’s lap, shoving her nose against you if you stopped petting her. She got more walks while on the boat than when she lived in a house. She walked on too many beaches to count, many times a different one in the evening than the one in the morning. Since she wouldn’t “go” on the boat, she always got a walk before we raised the anchor, sometimes before the sun was up if it was going to be a long sail. There wasn’t a mean bone in Daisy’s body. She never growled at other dogs and if a dog was aggressive or overly friendly, she ignored the naughty dog. She was not a good watchdog because she rarely barked. She was, quite simply, a great dog.
We know that Daisy is in heaven. After all, would it be heaven without our animal friends joining us there?
We have so many photos of Daisy. Here are a few.