God, I hate writing this…..  but we wanted to let everyone know that our beloved camping dog, Chimay, has passed.  She was just short of 16 ½ years old. Most of you haven’t seen her much since she had her vestibular (inner ear dizziness) condition in 2011. Our vet said she shouldn’t travel after that bout so we kept her pretty much to ourselves at home keeping her limited to walks to the park and just letting her enjoy life and kicking back around the house.  More recently she was having more issues with steps and stood around a lot longer to get her bearings. But she hung in there. At her last checkup at the beginning of the year the Drs. were amazed that she was still around and even more so that she was doing as well as she was.  As I said she hung in there until 11 days ago when she just stopped eating and wouldn’t drink but just a few swallows of water.  As the days went by we could see her slipping away. She must have lost twenty pounds and at the end looked like skin and bones.  But she was not in any pain so our plan was to just keep her comfortable and hopefully let nature take its course.  Over the last few days she got so weak she couldn’t walk and then couldn’t even manage to hold her head up.  But still she seemed in no pain.  But the kicker was 2 days ago when we noticed she would whimper when she tried to move around. Even in her sleep. It got worse.  I was up most of the night with her last night and knew it was time we did something.  Jeff and Cherrelyn came over this morning and we all made the decision to take her in.  As I write this we are trying to be strong but it will be hard. But we had so many good years with her and we will hang on to that and hope you all will too.