Remembering Daisy
Remembering Daisy the Dog – A tribute to our family matriarch
Born 31 May 2006. Died 27 October 2022. Aged 16 years.
ALWAYS BUSY, ALWAYS RUNNING AROUND, ALWAYS DOING THINGS 
With the saddest of hearts, I must tell you that Daisy Lyons, our beautiful matriarch, crossed the rainbow bridge just after 3pm on Thursday, 27 October 2022.
We were blessed to have had this incredible teeny tiny dog in our lives for 5,761 days, which is 15 years, nine months, nine days, or 189 months, nine days. The time seems so fleeting, and it is.
Daisy was trash to some women in the Bateman’s Bay region. She was found wandering the streets of Batehaven at ten months of age with a freshly broken back leg. It took five days for someone to catch her and take her to a vet. The owner denied ownership and all responsibility. Thanks to one of the staff members, who is the sister of a good friend, we were asked if we’d like to adopt her.
She came up for a weekend trial, and the rest, as they say, is history. She became our treasure and best friend to our dog Ruby then.
She’s been a massive part of our lives for most of the time Neal and I have been together (we met in 2003, and she arrived four years later), and her passing has left an enormous hole in our hearts and lives.
I chose the photo below as it is one of the last photos I took of our beautiful girl with my camera just last month, and it sums up her cheeky personality perfectly: the pouty lips about to backchat, the radar dish ears listening to all the sounds, and the cheeky expression.
Even on Wednesday afternoon, she was up at the studio site singing the song of her people one last time. She took a turn for the worse that night, and I was up all night with her. It was time.
Over the past ten months, we have thought on several occasions that it was possibly her time when she was having a bad day. But then, the next day, she’d bounce back to her usual self. This time was different. It’s the hardest decision any dog parent has to make.
I’m so grateful we found each other, but I’m also so appreciative we could gift her almost four years of living on a farm. She was born to run, and she loved the farm.
Before we purchased our farm, we asked the real estate if we could have a second inspection to bring our dogs up to explore the 44 acres and make sure they loved it as much as we did. All three of them lit up at that time when they arrived and were in doggy paradise, racing through the grasses and exploring all the new sights and smells.
Daisy was diagnosed with an enlarged heart in June 2020 and has been on some pretty hefty heart drugs and diuretics ever since. Our vet is in awe of how long Daisy survived after diagnosis. The diuretics take their toll on a little dog, and along with normal ageing and arthritis, her little legs grew stiffer and weaker over the past year or so.
Despite all this, she still adored exploring the farm every day, multiple times a day, and even had a little gallop most days. If she wasn’t with us, she’d take herself out into the homestead gardens and potter about exploring every inch of the garden.
We took Harvey and Luna to the vet with us yesterday. The #3dogkateers became two, and it was essential for us to have them there with Daisy for her final moments and transition.
The house is very quiet. Daisy was the “voice” of our home. If the wind was blowing in the right direction, she could be heard by farms kilometres away.
Last night, Neal and I celebrated Daisy’s life by watching all the videos from the beginning. Choosing a photo to post tonight was hard, as there are so many. She was our 16-year-old daughter, and we were so blessed to have known her.
Vale, sweet Daisy, you know how much we love you.
Here is a tiny collection of the thousands of photos of our beautiful Daisy taken throughout her life with us.
If you have a senior dog in your family, and you don’t have beautiful photographic memories of them in print, I urge you to give me a call and make a booking. Please don’t put it off. We never know what tomorrow will bring.
