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Canon Image Challenge | all galleries >> CIC 277: Dec 2025 Evergreens and Colored Lights >> Eligible > Memorializing Wylie on the Xmas Tree
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23-Dec-2025 jimmsp

Memorializing Wylie on the Xmas Tree

Richfield, MN

This ornament is hanging on my daughter's Christmas Tree. It is in remembrance of her golden retriever who passed away in 2012. He was also a good friend of mine. I positioned the light above his head - it sort of looks like a halo.

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Canon Image Challenge27-Dec-2025 11:31
Hummmmm....! That insight into Horses is...fascinating. Thanks...Traveller
Canon Image Challenge26-Dec-2025 19:21
Yes, there are something like 34 vet schools. Being a veterinarian has been his goal since attending zoo camp at age seven. While he is primarily interested in small animals and wildlife (he originally wanted to be a zoo veterinarian), he had considerable experience with horses and farm animals during his fourth year of vet school. I learned from him that caring for horses is tricky. Apparently, their will to live is different from other animals and their injuries cannot always be treated. Vet school hospitals are like human hospitals associated with universities in receiving difficult cases. The doctors and nurses/techs appreciate being challenged.

Dave
Canon Image Challenge26-Dec-2025 16:29
From everything I have read, our country needs vets; and there just are not enough vet schools. Dave - I'm glad your son has chosen this career path. The U Minnesota has a great vet school as well, both for small animals and large animals. The large animal clinic has been highly funded by the local horse racing community. When the local vets can't diagnose a problem, they often refer them to the University.

Jim
Canon Image Challenge26-Dec-2025 16:16
He has already received his veterinary degree and is licensed. His goal is to become a soft tissue surgeon, so he is going the route of internship, residence, and fellowship. The hospital where he is interning has a high volume of cases, many of which are educational. While some owners choose to pursue expensive treatments, euthanization is often the end result. Doctors and technicians there have a lot on their hands and on their minds.

Dave
Canon Image Challenge26-Dec-2025 08:43
Your son is going to be a veterinarian? I seriously find this to be very impressive. Good be upon him....Traveller
Canon Image Challenge26-Dec-2025 03:56
I am a dog person and while furry visual appeal is important to me, personality carries the day. I have been fortunate to have a variety of great dogs. Our present pooch is small in stature but big-hearted. We're picking her up from boarding tomorrow, having just returned from visiting our son in Florida. We had two dogs for 9½ years, saying farewell to her big brother (from the same breeder) at the ripe old age of 17½. Both kids have his paw print, which is a reminder we only see when we visit them. A bit emotional, and I really miss having two dogs. Our son showed us around the veterinary hospital where he is interning, and I was very moved by all the animals receiving care and the people tending to them 24/7. A beautiful golden retriever came in while we were there. He was so calm. There was no sign of anything amiss with him. His owner, on the other hand, was clearly wracked. I know the feeling.

Dave
Canon Image Challenge25-Dec-2025 14:09
T - dogs are like people in many ways. There are good dogs and bad dogs, just like there are good and bad people; all to varying degrees. Dogs are also heavily influenced by their human, just like kids are by their parents. It is all just part of the complex world we live in.

Jim
Canon Image Challenge25-Dec-2025 03:55
Jim, you are correct as you usually are...I suppose this was a a Baa-Humbug moment.

I did want to come back and apologize for the comment...but with the understanding that this is the only place I can honestly speak my mind since nobody knows I'm here...except maybe my brother...so here, I unburden myself.

I am really happy that you and yours have had happy dog experiences...myself not so much...I am thinking of Popcorn, a very old miniature poodle with arthritis in his hips...another dog I wanted to see put down, it was so pathetic Popcorn crossing the floor to try to hop into my lap but was unable...or, on further thinking, the pit bull that savagely bit a young neighbors arm...the owner was a client of mine, when they refused to have the dog destroyed (I'm a one bite only kind of guy), and I went to the police...well, I lost him as a client and he still hates me.

Likewise, the dog fighting ring discovered in the large back yard of a rental of mine...when that was raided and the dogs were removed by animal control with some violence, one young woman threatened to have me killed instead...Well, this is not to mention the pack of dogs that tried to attack me in Surat Thani, Southern Thailand...(my fault I for being out in the lonely dark of midnight in a far away and unknown dangerous river port city)

I could go on with a dozen other stories, but this has been somewhat of a voyage of Self Discovery...I am not a dog person, obviously, though I guess I am obliquely happy for people that have had lovely dogs that actually became family members....lucky them, both for the dog and the family.

I think I'll head out for absolution at a Midnight Mass...lol (I need it)
Canon Image Challenge24-Dec-2025 18:29
HHMMMM, sounds like a Baa-Humbug moment.
To add to your bucket of thoughts - Wylie was a rescue dog. Jennifer got him as a 1 year old, he had been abandoned by his owners when they moved from a country house. He foraged by himself for a number of months.
Jennifer always wanted a dog, remembering her family dog that I had for 13 years. But at about the same time she got him, she found out that she was unable to have children of her own. So Wylie became a close part of the family. After she put Wiley down, she picked up 2 more golden retrievers. They are great dogs.
As for your friend who spends a lot on his dog - I would venture to guess that you don't know the whole story.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Jim
Canon Image Challenge24-Dec-2025 13:12
I am surprised the memory lingers so long...I remember my dogs, my favorite cat that I had to put down due to feline Leukemia...a very traumatic event...but after 13 years living together, I still put her down.

This is a bit of a bug-a-boo of mine...treating pets medically better than humans...Currently, I have a friend of some, military/diplomatic note, who has been having a year long battle with cancer in his much loved but very old dog.

Thousands and thousands of dollars are being spent...I want to shout, "just kill the damned thing, put it out of its misery..."

but of course I don't say this...but it is truly what I believe and feel.

So I like the Ginger Bread Dog, done in ceramics, though I am not sure that I like the underlying attachment.

( I hate being such a bastard on Christmas Eve, but let me wish to the Living, a bright and happy Christmas and...blue lovely skies for 2026!)

Best Wishes, Traveller
Canon Image Challenge24-Dec-2025 12:31
You can’t beat a golden retriever for a family dog. As a youth we mostly had mutts and strays, also good dogs but after my career and being exposed to virtually every breed around goldens and labs were the best IMO. Let the disagreements begin….. Paul