There's not much joy in the House of Neale tonight. Or in the House of Romines or the House of Joseph. I got a call this afternoon that a close family member passed away unexpectedly this afternoon. My wife and I are in a deep state of mourning, and my parents are beside themselves with grief.

K.C. Lou Romines, my parent's beloved Catahoula, died as a result of complications from surgery this afternoon. She was just six years old.

When my wife and I decided to adopt a dog for our family, we searched high and low and found a person in Lubbock who had bred his pureblood Catahoula with his purebred Rhodesian Ridgeback so he could have some additional ranching dogs. We first met Rhoda when she was 3 weeks old and hadn't even opened her eyes yet. We fell in love on the spot, and came back four weeks later to pick her up. The trick was, the man who sold her to us left town, so my parents had to pick her up before he left and kept here until we got into town. That was when they met K.C.

When we arrived at my folks' place in Lubbock that weekend, Rhoda was already there and playing. But my stepdad was gone when we arrived even though we were expecting to meet him there, too. Shortly he came back with another puppy, the last one from the same litter. The two puppies, K.C. (short for Kati Catahoula) and Rhoda (short for Zydeco Rhoda) had grown up together in a family, and K.C. was the last puppy of the litter, as yet unclaimed. Ken fell hard for her and went back to get her after he had picked up Rhoda for us.

Except for their color difference, Rhoda has red merle with brindle and K.C. had blue merle with brindle, and that K.C. was a little larger than Rhoda, you really couldn't tell the two dogs apart when they were young. As they got older, the Rhodesian Ridgeback in K.C. began to become more prominent. She developed a barreled chest and had a pronounced ridge on her back when she got excited. Rhoda looks just like a purebred Catahoula and I'm sure we could pass her off as purebred, so long as we didn't breed her (don't worry, she's spayed). But the big difference was noticed when they were about 6 months old and my folks brought K.C. to town to visit her sister.

K.C. had some trouble in the car on the way out here, and she was still showing some signs of discomfort several hours after they arrived, so Ken took her to our local Vet to have her checked out. The X-rays revealed the bad news - K.C. had full onset hip displaysia. Her hip joints were almost completely eroded. This is a condition that usually affects dogs when they are older, but with K.C., she was born with the condition.

For five years, K.C. was on medication to help ease the pain when she walked and played. My folks kept her weight low to ease the pressure on her hips. In the year before her fifth birthday, though, the pain was more than what the medication could alleviate, and her condition just worsened. So my folks took the plunge and had the worst of her two hip joints rebuilt in surgery. The operation was a difficult one, and the recovery was even more difficult. When we went down to visit last Thanksgiving (2003), she was able to put weight on her leg, but she was still hobbling and needed lots of care and attention.

By the time we went back in April for my brother's wedding, K.C. was moving around like she'd never had a problem with that hip. Her recovery was a huge success, so much so that my parents decided they would have the same procedure done on her other hip once she regained her strength fully on the already-repaired one.

In May, they took her in for the surgery, but her pre-op bloodwork showed that she had low-grade tick fever, and they identified it in time that it could be treated with antibiotics. They expected a full recovery, and she did. Two weeks ago, when the bloodwork came back clean, they scheduled her for surgery on Monday, June 28, 2004.

After the surgery, which was much less involved than the first and would have a much shorter recovery time, the vet decided to keep K.C. and extra day as there was some draining from the wound that they didn't like and her energy level wasn't that great. My folks checked in on her this morning, and the vet reported that she was much more energetic this morning, she ate a hearty meal this morning, and was showing her true personality. They expected to be able to release her to come home this afternoon.

When Ken called late this afternoon to find out when they could come pick her up, the vet broke the news that over the course of the afternoon, K.C. became listless, lost her energy, and unexpectedly died. As of yet, they do now know if there was internal bleeding from the incisions that did not clot properly or if a blood clot broke loose and caused a stroke or what the exact cause of death was. But the end result was the same. K.C. Lou Romines underwent surgery to improve her quality of life, but ended up passing from this world to the next.

This has been a very difficult 2 years for our animal family members. We lost three of our cats within a year's time, one got out and was killed by a neighborhood dog, one died of old age, and one died of a seizure. One of my mother's cats got out of the house and ran off. Along with the other tragedies we're facing in our people family (my step-sister's illness, the death of immediate family members of close friends, and a lifelong friend's lymphoma diagnosis), this loss could not have come at a worse time. We will be planning an appropriate tribute to K.C. and the joy that she brought to our lives.

If you knew K.C., or if you have a close pet or have lost a close pet, please keep our family in your prayers. And please say a special prayer for K.C., that she has found an endless field where she can run and jump as much as she wishes without any pain or discomfort.