Loppy Dallion Superstar

Today was one of the hardest days of my life. Leslie and I had to have our pet Loppy put to sleep. Loppy was 14 years old, and well we never fully knew exactly what type of breed of dog he was, but he was the best dog I have ever had. Loppy had never bitten anyone or let out a growl at even a stranger. He has so friendly and laid back. Anyone who had come over to the house or stayed with us on their stop in Athens while on tour could tell you, dogs don’t get sweeter than Loppy. I was given Loppy by my sister in the fall of 1995. He was just a puppy and a bit too hyper for her and my niece Christina. My sister got him from our cousin, but he had never taken him in for shots, and on my 21st birthday I found him dehydrated in the woods near my house sick from parvo. We took him to the vet, and with lots of fluids we got him through it. (most dogs don’t live through parvo). We used to live across the street from a practicing cowboy when we lived in Florida. When I say practicing I mean he rode bulls, would lasso cows, the whole rodeo lifestyle. Well, we soon found out Loppy loved to herd cattle. He was a natural herding dog from what our neighbor told us. This however came to end once he got into the pin with the bull while I was at work and the bull put a horn through his leg. Leslie and I came home and found him on the porch with a massive tear inside his inner back leg. We took him to the vet and once again he was patched up. He used to get to run free with all his other dog friends back when we were in Florida, but this would come to an end when someone stole him. He was missing for 3 days. We drove all around looking for him, no luck. He had tags, so I knew if he had been picked up by the dog catcher we would have been called. I decided to call the pound anyway, and they had him there. I asked where they picked him up and they told me it was on the other side of town. I guess he got free from who took him, and maybe he was heading home. We got him back, and from that moment he became a house dog. We moved to Athens in 2004, and at 9 years old he seemed just fine. In November of 2007 we took him to the vet and they told us he had a heart murmur and an enlarged prostate. The main thing that would help was to have him neutered. Yeah I know, you had him neutered at 12!!!!! It was the only thing that would help his heart and prostate. He bounced back in about a month, then he jumped up in his favorite chair one night like he always did and let out this yelp like he had been bit something. He wasn’t bit by anything, but he had given himself a hernia when he jumped up on the chair. So then he went under the knife once again. This time to put his guts back in the right place, but he never really fully came back from this one. After this surgery he became an older dog. There would be times where the inner puppy would come out, or he’d run across the yard to tree a squirrel, but he started to stay in bed much more than he used to. Then about a month ago he started to have trouble going to the bathroom. He had flairs of colitis over the years, but the cries he would let out now were ones we had never heard before. We tried different medicines, changed his diet, everything we could do. The last few days the pain was so much we had to help it to go away. We fed him the best dog food, we made sure he had all his shots, check ups, heartworm pills, walks, exercise, and plenty of hugs, rubs, and kisses, but you can’t keep them going forever. We let his last day be one of the best we could. We gave him a small cup of vanilla ice cream, some homemade sweet potato chips (baked and a bit on the softer side), and today before we took him in we gave him an old favorite he hasn’t had since we lived in Florida….a sausage biscuit.[ My dad when taking care of Loppy would give him a sausage biscuit.] He loved sausage biscuits. It has rained from Saturday all the way till today, so we didn’t get to take him to the walking park, and he didn’t get to tree one last squirrel, but he was given 14 years of love and care. I’ll never have another dog like him, and honestly I don’t think I’ll ever get another dog for myself. Leslie has her little Pip, and he is warming up to me more and more, but he’ll always be Leslie’s dog. I just want to say Loppy you have always been my best friend and I love and miss you.

a song Keith John Adams wrote about Loppy
Sloppy Loppy