We will miss you Molly Brown

Molly Brown Jensen
10/31/97 - 5/1/09

Naughty Molly after some fun in the mud!

August 2008

Dear Molly Brown,

I can’t believe you are gone. We had a really tough weekend, getting used to the house being so quiet without you. We know that you aren’t suffering anymore, you were so sick in the end and we really hated making the decision to put you to sleep but it was the right one. I wanted to write you this memoir letter so that Brett, Emersyn, our future children and I would never forget how special you were.

Brett received you as a Christmas gift when you were a puppy. His parents hid you in your brother’s car until it was time to “open” your present on Christmas morning. You were his best buddy and he loved taking care of you.

I must be honest, when I first met you, I wasn’t impressed. J I remember it very clearly; some friends and I went to your house for New Years Eve in 2001, right about when Brett fell in love with me but was SO in denial about it...that is another story. :) You were 3 years old and full of energy, to the point where it overwhelmed me a bit. I thought you were kind of dirty looking, with your crazy brown and white fir and freckled little face. I had to admit though, you were amazingly soft and stayed that soft for your entire life. Brett showed me one of your favorite activities in the garage, him swinging a PVC pipe with a stuffed animal on it and you running around like CRAZY. I had no idea that I was going to marry Brett and fall in love with this crazy dog of his.

Christmas 2006

Fast forward two and half years. Brett had proposed to me and we were talking about where we were going to live after we got married and he said that of course we needed to find someplace pet friendly. I wasn’t sure why and then Brett said that you were going to be living with us. I was horrified!! Dogs are smelly and they shed, this did not fit in with the pristine home that I had envisioned in my head!!! But apparently this was a deal breaker so we indeed looked for a place where you could live with us.

I had no idea you could fall in love with an animal. You were my best friend and companion. We snuck you into our first two apartments; we couldn’t afford the pet deposits. The second apartment caught on to you and gave us a notice that you had to leave or we did. We asked Brett’s parents to care for you and they agreed. We got the notice on a Friday and decided that you would go live at the Jensen’s on Monday. I cried the entire weekend, no joke. You were my little buddy. I was in real estate school via online at the time and home ALL day since we had one car and Brett took it to work. I read my real estate reading to you, we watched Oprah together on my “lunch” breaks. I took you on walks, although not as many as I should have. You were a companion and I loved you and hated sending you to live with your “foster parents”. It was then that I knew how much I really loved you. When I dropped you off at Brett’s parents house, I bawled and anxiously awaited the day that we would move and be able to live with you again. We bought our house a short time later and you were reunited with us, although we had acquired two kitties and let’s just say, that did not go over well with either of you three.

Christmas 2005

Molly, you were such a special dog. Brett had taught you to do all kinds of tricks. You could roll over, sit, stay, leave it (where we would tease you with food and you weren’t allowed to “take it” unless the person who told you to leave it said so, we would even put food on your NOSE and you would leave it), be a kitty (where you would run in between our legs like a cat), bang (where we would shoot you with our hand and you would fall over “dead”), speak (bark on command) and to shake. People thought you were ferocious because of your loud bark but once someone came inside, you ran to them and sat down, hoping to be pet. You rarely jumped up on people and were very well trained. Most of the time anyways. You were SO smart. We would ask you if you wanted to go on a walk and you would go get the leash for us, then go and get our tennis shoes. Out of a huge pile of shoes, at least 15 pairs, you would pick out our Nike shoes one by one and bring them to us in your mouth. Adorable. We used to leave you in your kennel whenever we left (which ended when you learned to open it or we came home to your mouth bleeding because you were trying to gnaw your way out) and when we would say “go to bed” or “go to your kennel”, you would, very obediently. Same with when we would go to bed, as soon as we turned off the tv downstairs, you would run upstairs, usually beating us. You ate every night before we went to bed, that is why you were so eager probably. And a side note about eating, you would let out a belch frequently after inhaling your food. Hilarious.

Despite your ferocious bark (which our mail man said was the scariest thing on his entire route, good job!), you were somewhat of a chicken at times. You HATED airplanes, which made living near the airshow a problem. In fact, it was SUCH a problem that you decided to escape our house two summers ago. I had gone to lunch with a friend and was gone for two hours. I came back, hoping that you had been okay, I had forgotten about the airshow and remembered how the incredibly loud jets scared you. I came inside and called you but you didn’t come. I called Brett panicked that I just couldn’t find you, where could you be!?!?!? Brett said to check the windows. I thought he was insane. I checked the first window that I thought of, our guest room window. Sure enough, you had bent the iron headboard and wedged yourself between the air conditioner and the window (a 5 or 6 inch gap), nudging aside the plexiglass, and jumped out of our second story window onto a concrete driveway. I nearly passed out, I had no idea how you could have survived that jump. I ran downstairs and jumped into my car, which by the way, was the ONLY way we could get you back to us when you escaped our house. You thought that meant we were going for a car ride and we were……back home! Anyways, I got in the car and raced around the neighborhood, partly looking for your dead body since you had suffered such a fall. I was crying as I drove around, hoping you hadn’t wandered onto the country highway that bordered our subdivision. I came to a main street of our neighborhood and looked down the street and saw you, about 6 blocks down. I opened the passenger door and called you and you came sauntering down the street, clearly pleased with yourself that you had escaped. I was so mad at you!!! All you had to show for your adventure was a very small puncture wound on your leg that had probably happened on the plexi glass. We were able to clean it ourselves and you made a full recovery, you naughty dog. From this point on, we arranged to either be home or have someone home with you during the air show. This was not the first time you had jumped out of a second story window though; it was your THIRD time. The first time, you decided that you weren’t a big fan of our landscapers in our first apartment, so you did the same thing, wedged yourself between the air conditioner and the window and jumped out our second story apartment onto the grass. But this time, we didn’t find you on our own because we were at work and had no idea you had left! I went to pick up Brett from work at 9 and when he got in the car, he asked me where you were. I thought he was being onry so I said, at home. He said, nope, you were at his parent’s house. You had jumped out our window and then traveled approx. 1 ½ miles down several busy streets to Brett’s parents house. We lived in a huge apartment community so I am thinking you got confused and then headed to their place. Brett’s mom heard you barking in the front yard and there you were, wanting to be let in. A man had followed you from one of the busy roads because he thought you were lost. You wouldn’t come to him when he called you but he followed you to make sure you were safe and you found the Jensen’s home, amidst HUNDREDS of other homes in their subdivision. And they aren’t right off a main road, you had to really know where you were going. Since you didn’t get there until the evening, we think you went and had a good old time and a nearby lake and had some fun chasing the ducks. You indeed were a naughty dog. The second time you jumped out the window, you first got yourself out of your locked metal kennel, how we still don’t know, and then nudged open Brett’s bedroom window, again at his parents house while you were in foster care and jumped into their back yard. You were bionic, nothing could stop you. You learned to jump over their 6 foot fence and escape even! Other things that scared you were fireworks, so much in fact that you completely tore apart Brett’s bedroom door at his parent’s house when you were 2 or 3 during the 4^th of July. Another scary thing, thunder and lightening! Yet another tale of destruction involves the garage door sensor in our garage during a storm.

Naughty naughty.

You were a little bit of a nut Molly Brown. One time, before I knew you, Brett tells me that you were obsessed with barking at his parent’s rental house ceiling and vents. They thought you were crazy. Then one day, they come home to THOUSANDS of bees, some dead, some alive that had eaten through the ceiling of his sister’s room. You could hear the bees and it was literally driving you crazy. Unfortunately, this birthed your crazy obsession with air vents. Whenever you were nervous or anxious, you would run over to the air vents and paw at them and bark. Whenever I vacuumed near them, you would try to attack the vacuum. You were known for your crazy air vent obsession, people thought it was funny and it was. You also couldn’t stand reflections of things on the wall, such as mirrors, phones or cd’s. We would all of the sudden see you lunge at a wall and realize that there was a cd hitting a light and causing a reflection. Needless to say, you weren’t a fan of flashlights either.

Molly was a duck fan. I got her this t-shirt on sale, much to Brett's dismay. She loved wearing it though, I would ask if she wanted to wear her pretty t-shirt and then when I put it on, she ran about the house so excited.

Strangely enough, one of her favorite places to lay. On the cool hard slate of the fireplace hearth.

I went to take this picture of Brett and two day old Emersyn and Molly felt that she should be in the picture too, she was across the room before I got the camera out.

Molly, skeptical but sweet towards her little sister.

Molly kisses, gross!!

You loved playing. Taking you to lakes was always fun, we could throw pretty much anything into water and you would swim out and get it. We loved taking you to Rood Ridge Park. They have a running creek in the park. You would get tired so you would drop your Frisbee in the water and then head downstream and plop down in the creek, waiting for the Frisbee to float down to you. You always carried your Frisbee too when we were on our way home from playing at the park or on a walk. We figured out that you could be off leash if we had a Frisbee in our hand too, Brett loved discovering that about you.

You were a lover, such a sensitive dog. You hated it when we raised our voices and would always take one of our sides during an argument. If we were on the couch, you would jump up and insist on “protecting” one is us, which sometimes meant crawling into our laps. If one of us was sad over something, you would come cuddle up with us and MAKE us pet you and give you loves. When people would come visit, you would decide that you needed some attention and go over and flick people’s hands up so they landed on your head, making them pet you. You were so sweet to Emersyn, you tried not to show that you cared about her but we know you did. You would lay next to her, go into her room with me whenever she was crying, always came into her nursery (even though you weren’t allowed to be in there!!) when we were reading her bed time story. We told you that you were going to have a little sister during my pregnancy and you didn’t seem too interested, but when she came you were wonderful. You never seemed jealous or bitter. You loved to cuddle, mainly with Brett. In fact, you made him the cuddler that he is today and I thank you for that. He says that you two used to spoon every night before we got married, hee hee, a funny visual to think of.

You always appeared to dislike other animals but we know about your “secret” relationships. We know that you and Jack “secretly” hung out on the couch and the guest bed, we caught you several times! We know that you and Rudy, the Boston Terrier across the street had a love/hate thing going on, for whenever either of you got out, you would run to the other person’s fence or front door and bark like crazy. We know that you and Brandy, the dog we dog sat got along okay as long as there was no food around.

Molly's last pics, poor baby looks so sick.

Last family pic.

I will miss so many things about you. Miss you hanging out with Emersyn on my bathroom floor while I took a shower and then you would sneak out. I will miss getting out of the shower and hearing a thump as you jumped off our bed, where you were NOT supposed to be. I will even miss getting out of the shower and sometimes catching you passed out on my bed, pretending to sleep so that I wouldn’t kick you off. I will miss you hanging out with me in the kitchen while I cooked, often in the MIDDLE of the kitchen which wasn’t my preference but I loved that you wanted to be near me. I will miss shooing you away from the dishwasher as you desperately try to lick any food remnants off plates as I load them in the dishwasher. I will miss you sleeping on the way too small wicker dog bed (that we bought pillowcases that matched our bedding for) that we had in our room that belonged to a former pet that Brett’s parents had. No one understood why you liked that bed but you would curl up and small as you could and still be hanging over the sides of it. I will miss giving you baths and then blow drying your fur, an unnecessary step but one you enjoyed nonetheless. I will miss yelling at you for barking because you were going to wake your little sister. I am so sad that Emersyn won’t remember you and none of our other children will get to meet you.

You will always have a very special place in my heart that no other doggy will truly ever fill because you were my first dog.

I love you Molly Brown, also known as Molly B, MB, Bee, Bee Bee, Beezer, Beezer Lee Lee, Lee Lee Sobeeski, Lola, Lolita, Lo…….you were such a good girl and we are so blessed that you were a part of our lives for 11 ½ years.

Love,

“Mom”, “Dad”, and your “little sister”