In Loving Memory of Spike

Just this past week, the FBVillage lost a grand little French Bulldog. He didn’t give his foster mom much occasion to believe he was ill until the day he died, and then he went peacefully, drifting away in his sleep, curled up in his bed only a few feet away from her chair.

He had been a bit subdued the day before, and that very morning he had vomited a little in his bed, but he still went out with his best bulldog buddy, Hula. They liked to sunbathe together on the deck. His foster mom went off to work for three hours, and when she cam home at 1:30, he didn’t want to have anything to eat or even get out of bed. so his foster mom made an appointment for him that afternoon at 5:00. Spike never made that appointment.

“I made some business calls for an hour and went to check on him and he was gone. I was only sitting about 15 feet from him. He looked like he was sleeping. I took him in to the vet’s office, and he called me later to say Spike had a tumor on his spleen that had ruptured. He thinks the tumor had only been there for 4-5 weeks and that there was no way of me knowing that it was there. Spike will be cremated and his remains will stay with me.

I was so optimistic that he was doing better. He was putting on weight and actually having firm poop for the first time. I was hoping to get him ready for the French Bulldog Bus once his poop straightened out. He still didn’t have bladder control, but a towel on the belly on our way to the back door worked just fine. I laughed the other night because I forgot the towel and picked him up to go out and he sprayed the entire sliding glass door with urine. I didn’t mind at all. I did laundry every day for him.

He had a funny little walk due to his spinal surgery but was a very sweet loving dog who was kind to all two and four-legged creatures. He had a lovely frog face that could make you melt. He will be missed by everyone at home but especially by Hula who is being awfully quiet tonight and won’t go outside without him.”

Melissa Myers
August 5, 2010

Spike never spent a day when he wasn’t loved, first by the military family stationed in Germany who brought little Spike back with them to the States and who paid for his surgery when he developed a sudden paralysis in his hind legs, then by the FBVillage volunteers who took him in when his dad was deployed and his mom could not look after several small children and provide Spike with the post operative care and attention he so desperately needed, then by the volunteers who banded together to take him on his long journey across country to his final foster home in North Carolina, where Melissa loved and spoiled him for fourteen happy months.

By all accounts, he was a most marvelous little creature, described by his owner’s little daughter as actually six animals in one: “He’s a dog, a bunny ‘cause he hops around when excited, a skunk (what Frenchie isn’t a stinker at times!), a pig when he eats, a bat with those big ears, and a frog of course!” We would like to imagine that all six manifestations of Spike are now happily cavorting on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, strong and whole again, and having a wonderful time.