04/23/2026
For all of my clients who enjoyed watching Louie-Poodle in the background of all of your dogs’ training videos…
Louie Poodle, August 15, 2009 – April 18, 2026, four months shy of his 17th birthday.
He started out as a client dog. His owner, a woman in her 70s with frontal lobe damage, was not able to care for him or herself, safely, so moved to Colorado to live with her daughter and family. Unfortunately, Louie was not well liked by the son-in-law who physically abused Louie to the point of several hospitalizations, including having to have his tail amputated due to a broken tailbone. The four year-old daughter was also encouraged to hurt Louie…pulling his ears and hitting him. While doing grocery shopping one snowy, 22°, winter day in January, I got a call to go pick up Louie because they didn’t want him in the house anymore. When I arrived, Louie was tied to the railing on the porch, shivering in the snow, with a box of his belongings next to him. He went with me without hesitation and never looked back.
As anyone who is of an advanced age knows, it doesn’t take much for something physical to happen that impacts your life in a negative way. Louie likely suffered a slipped disc in his neck, simply jumping off a single step or off his cot. I don’t know when it happened, but he woke up Saturday morning, not able to walk. The only possible solution would be surgery, which he would not do well under anesthesia, so I had to make the decision to relieve him of his pain.
For three years, he has been by my side as my shadow and my little protector. No more will I have to tell client dogs “don’t sniff the poodle” because Louie would end up giving them the what for and teaching them that a little 8lb dog is never to be pushed around. No more will I wake up in the middle of the night with Louie asking to get on the bed just so Mike could wake up with Louie‘s face right in his and to smell the infamous “Louie breath“. No more will Louie and Pepper chase each other around the kitchen playing tag and biting at each other. No more will I hear his frantic alert barks that Mike was entering the room, in preparation of protecting me from the big bad man. I know I only had him for three years, but I miss him terribly.
