Rowdy Riveting Empress Rosalind (Rosey)

I admit I don’t know where to start this post. Today is the anniversary of Rosey’s passing and I wanted to write something to mark the occasion. We spent last New Year’s Eve quite a bit differently than we will today. We’ll get to that but lets start from the beginning.

Rosey was born on the fourteenth of November in the year 2012. Her parents are my sister’s dog, Bella, and my sister’s brother-in-law’s dog, Vince. Her AKC registered name is Rowdy Riveting Empress Rosalind but we mostly called her Rosey or Rose.

A few days after Bella had her litter, the family drove out to the Lansing area, about an hour and a half away, to see them. That’s where we met the whole squad and you can see a picture below, of me holding our little Rosey, for the first time.

Yeah, so we did that, and then after Christmas we came out again to see the pups. They had already gotten quite a bit bigger. Great Danes are puppies for a long time, but physically they’re not puppies for very long.

And then a week after that, we came out to pick her up. Some of the litter had already gone to their forever homes. Rose rode with me on my lap for the entire car ride back. I remember being nervous even just a carrying her in the car with me.

It was late enough in the year that I decided that I was going to adopt Rosey that I didn’t have my yard fenced in. So for a while there, for probably too long, it was like living in an apartment, taking her out any time to go for a walk. And I just love this picture of me and Rose enjoying her first snow.

We were both pretty tired after such a big day. I do remember her crying a lot that first night which was pretty sad. I do not believe it lasted more than a night or two though.

The cats were not too happy to see her. She pretty much took over as a puppy would often do, I suppose.

You do have to be careful with a Great Dane, though. If you get too cuddly, they don’t know their size. As they get bigger, then it becomes an issue.

I know there were probably accidents, but at this point it’s been so long that I don’t even remember any difficulty getting her house trained. When I wasn’t home, she was crate trained. That was her bed, you can tell her it’s time for bed and she would put herself to bed.

For at least the first year, my mom would come at lunchtime to let her out, so she never went the full day for over a year.

For a while there, she was getting Blue Buffalo for large breeds, but that was too rich, so we ended up switching her over to Holistic Select.

One of her sisters didn’t get adopted. So my sister would bring her over periodically. We’d usually meet at my parents’ house, and we’d bring two Great Dane puppies and watch them run around, which was fun.

Pretty crazy to see that you’re six months into life and this dog is bigger than most dogs you’ll see on the street.

Like there’s there’s some pictures of her where she looks like a full-grown dog but she’s only six months old. I did find that you tend to get noticed when you’re walking a great dane.

It’s nice that she tended toward her mom’s size, which maxed out around 110 pounds. Which is a lot for a dog, but undersized for a great dane. She was a healthy weight for her body, but being a little bit leaner helped keep some health issues at bay a little bit longer. We got some extra time with her because of it.

For the first few years we went to my parents house frequently but she didn’t really love the car. I never let her put her head out the window when we were driving and she never sat down either, so she was always back there standing up. Pacing around whenever she could she didn’t ever really relax when she was in the car although I guess we were only ever 20 minutes away from wherever we were going so it wasn’t too bad really.

Within the first year she got microchipped and fixed before she got too big. I remember that she came home and it was like she was drunk and tired. This dog that barely settled slept on the floor with her head on the marble of the fireplace. She owned the couch so this was especially weird.

She never ended up with any kind of bloat issues, which can occur in Great Danes. So I was thankful for that. Reading through information about Great Danes this tends to come up a lot and I was concerned.

She was free-fed and never would not scarf it. So I think that made our lives easier, both hers and mine. I tried to keep her fairly inactive for the next 30 minutes or so after eating, just to make sure that things have settled.

In early 2019, she started exhibiting some discomfort around her eye. She would rub on it with her paws and clearly it was bothering her, so it took her to the vet. We ended up having to go see a specialist at Blue Pearl. We tried drops to treat the inflammation in her eye. Even with medication we just couldn’t get to come down. The vets recommended to have one of her eyes removed.

So May of 2019, she had surgery to have her left eye removed. That is something that you’re never quite prepared for. It’s just hard to look at. It breaks your heart a bit to see. She’s scared going in and confused/disoriented coming out. It took some time to recover. She’s a large dog and she needed to wear a huge cone so she couldn’t scratch at herself. She ran that thing into everything including me.

I did fin this photo from about a year later which I’m including because I can’t stand to include anything sooner after the surgery.

In the first few months of 2020, before the world shut down, I had renovated the kitchen and bathroom at my house. So I’d go to work all day and come home in various states of demolition and then construction. During this time Rosey spent time with my parents. So I’d alternate days between going to see Leah and Noah and going to see Rose at my parents’ house. That was tough being away from her for so long.

Eventually did get the yard fully fenced in, but not until it seemed like Leah and Noah might be moving in. With this new freedom she could be let out without having to walk out to the fenced in section. We liked to go in the backyard and throw the ball around. She had enough space to get up to full speed at which point you needed to stay out of her way.

By the end of 2020, Leah and Noah moved in bringing with them their dog Tater, Leah’s Mom’s dog Dusty, and their two cats Phantom and Queenie. We got our blended family up to seven pets. At this point Rosey was still pretty curious so that sent Queenie into hiding but Tater was an old friend already and Dusty didn’t really mind anyone.

We fairly quickly realized that a queen bed for the three of us, meaning Leah, Rosie, and I wasn’t going to cut it. So we ended up getting a California King sized bed and Rose still managed to spread out and take as much room as possible.

As she slowed down and got use to the other animals being around Queenie and Ophelia started being seen more often and everyone was a bit more comfortable. It was a good thing we had two couches because with two couch potato dogs we needed all that room. She definitely had a preferred spot so I included a photo of her there here.

You can see Phantom in this photo too and he’s still not quite sure about her. Also, it’s remarkable how white her face has gotten compared to when she was younger.

She was a close talker and I think I may have spent too much time letting her have her face near mine. I didn’t mind but a dog that wants to rest her head on your shoulder isn’t for everyone.

In her old age she began exhibiting joint pain that made it harder for her to move. We kept her on Cosequin that helped her maintain her mobility for the last few years.

For the days leading up to her passing no amount of Cosequin would help her discomfort. More than that the strength in her back legs was going and quickly. What we later would learn was likely an acut onset nerve issue first presented in the inability to to do stairs or get up on a couch. She started not being able to communicate that she had to go to the bathroom and eventually had to be carried outside to do her business.

We had scheduled an in house vet to come out after the new year but she was so bad when we woke up on December 31st 2024 that we had to go in that day. I carried her to the car and we had called ahead so they met us in the parking lot with a stretcher.

Leah and I sat in a room at the vet with Rosey still in the back when they let us know what was going on. As with most things health related there are options but the situation was that nothing they could do was very likely to succeed. After discussing the options with Leah it was then that we made the decision to say goodbye. We told the vet and they prepared a room for us to spend some time with her. Before they moved us I called my Mom to let her know what was happening and texted my siblings too.

They gave her something to keep her comfortable and we laid on the floor in a more comfortable dedicated room they have for this sort of thing. After awhile we said our goodbyes and the vet gave her the injections and she was gone.

We kept her collar and the vet sent a condolences card with some paw prints they took after we left. It was a sad way to spend the last day of the year.

I spent weeks expecting her to be in her spot on the couch or on the bed. I’ve been working remotely for years and she had always been on the bed near me. Now when I get up to leave the room nobody follows behind.

I miss my girl.