Today I spent some time putting our house back into pre-amputee/pre-hospice dog state. Our mattress is no longer on the floor. The dog beds are consolidated again. Dog drool has been cleaned from some of the blankets (there’s only so much laundry that will fit into one day).

I suspect I will keep finding signs of Romeo all over for quite some time. There are the hair/slime drool marks on several walls from shaking his head while his mouth was gooey. There are the corners of walls with dents in the paint from his massive tail.

But the most noticeable is probably his legacy at the bottom of the stairs. Last summer (when he still had four legs), there was an “incident” with the stairs. As recounted to my Facebook friends:

June 30, 2010

While attempting to follow me up the stairs this morning, I heard Romeo’s typical CLUMP-CLUMP as he ungracefully galloped up the stairs. After just a few CLUMPs though, there was a loud THUD-THUD. Concluding that he had managed to fall down the few steps he had climbed, I peeked down to see how things were. The first thing I noticed was the hole in the wall. Yes, our great dane managed to punch a hole in the wall by falling down the stairs. He is beyond special. By the way, he is fine and even immediately after the incident he looked at me as if to say “What’s up? I’m good, how’re you?”

Something to remember him by*

I suspect his face looked something like this at the time – plus or minus the drool.

*The hole is still there. Trent and I aren’t so great with home improvement projects.