I'M SAD ABOUT MY FRIEND HANK

Do you remember my basenji boyfriend, Hank?  He lived with Aunt Cheryl in Austin, Texas.  Well, yesterday Hank had to go to the Rainbow Bridge because he was very sick.  I am really, really sad about this, but I think Hank and Gabe are playing together now, and maybe they are also playing with our three little foster kittens, Janey, Jilly, and Jeeves.

Hank was 14 years old.  He found out he had Fanconi Syndrome when he was 4 years old, and he had to take lots of sodium bicarbonate tablets and other supplements.  Mom's first basenji, Trixie, also had Fanconi, like I told you once before.  Anyway, Aunt Cheryl was always very good about giving Hank all his pills and trying to get him to eat, even when he didn't feel like eating, which was a lot of the time lately.  Personally, I always feel like eating, and so does Barry, but sometimes Gabe used to not want to eat.  And Nicky feels that way sometimes, too.

Well, Aunt Cheryl could hardly get Hank to eat anything for the last few days, and then yesterday he started vomiting a whole bunch, and he was all kind of twitching, like he was having little seizures or something.  So that's why he went to the Rainbow Bridge.

But now I'm going to tell you some of the good things I remember about Hank.  First of all, he was very handsome.  Instead of being just a regular tri-colored basenji, he was what's called a "trindle," which means that the tan parts were actually brindle.

Hank was very friendly, and he let everybody pet him.  He would sit and lean his back up against a person, so that it was very convenient for them to pet him, and then if they stopped petting him, he would put his head back and look up at them, and he seemed to say, "Why did you quit?"  So then they would of course start petting him again, because it was so cute when he did that.

Another thing Hank liked to do was sleep underneath a blanket, so that you couldn't even tell he was there.  A lot of basenjis like to sleep under blankets or bedcovers, but I don't like to do this, and neither did Gabe, and neither did Trixie.  Mom thinks that maybe the three of us did not learn to like sleeping under the covers because we all started our lives in kennels, instead of sleeping in beds with humans.

But getting back to Hank, he was often called Hankster Prankster because he was always being naughty and getting into stuff he shouldn't be into.  He learned to open the refrigerator door, and one time he pulled out a great big package of hamburger.  Then Hank's brother Leo, who was a Great Dane/Lab mix, ate all the hamburger and the package, too.  Which made him very sick!  Finally, Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Art got one of those refrigerators that has the freezer in a drawer on the bottom, and Hank couldn't open that.

Anyway, there are a lot of stories about Hank getting into stuff and stealing stuff and being a very naughty basenji.  But I can't remember all those stories at the moment.  In fact, I can't remember any of them at the moment, and this is probably because when I'm writing this, it's late at night, and my brain has already gone into "sleep" mode!

I just wish that Hank didn't have to get so old and sick, and that he didn't have to die.  I'm going to miss him, because the next time we go to Texas to visit Aunt Cheryl, Hank won't be there.  And that will be strange and also very, very sad.