In Memoriam - Lotu - 2003 (2004) - 27.07.2017

With a bleeding heart I have to tell, that my beloved dog, Lotu, passed away yesterday after a stroke and massive seizures that forced us to call in a vet to help him go to dogs' paradise. It came like a very bad lightning strike, because, even though he had been relatively week for the past couple of months, he started getting better every day when I was in Estonia on a visit just now. And then, one day after I had left, Lotu had a stroke. And I wasn't there for him! Somehow I knew, that he won't be long among us, when I said good-bye to him when going back to Austria on the 25th. But I still hoped that he would continue getting better. Which he actually did, until the stroke. Well, at least it seemed he didn't have much pain.
It was hard for me though, because I couldn't cancel my work, even though I tried to- so I had to say good-bye to him through the phone in a shopping center (luckily I had another colleague with me, who could look after my client for the last 10 minutes of Lotu's life). I wish no one would have to go through such  a thing.
Today my family buried him on the edge of the forest next to our home, his head facing towards our home so that he can keep an eye on us even in his endless sleep. He has some rays of sun peeking through birch leaves so that he won't be too cold and too hot either. He has a nice wooden sign on his grave and flowers and a candle burning for him. My great aunt also planted an apple tree next to his grave. He is in a better place now, in a world full of sausages, storks, ladies, where he can walk himself as much as he wants to. But I will always remember Lotu for all his weird perks and behaviours and mostly his deep faithfulness and devotion towards me and my family.

I got Lotu (and named him actually Danny) on a relatively sunny autumn day in October 2014. We heard from some hunters that a very poor person has a dog at his place, who came to him, but he doesn't have any money to feed him. IThe dog had run away from his owner and no one knew where he came from. At that time Lotu seemed to be a bit less than a year old so we estimate that he lived altogether almost 14 years (more than German Shepherds usually do).
So, as we hadn't had a dog for a while, we decided to go and look at it and fell in love with him straightaway. As he didn't have anything else to eat besides apples, we gave him some sausage and then took him home. I can still remember running around with him in our garden being the happiest person in this world.  He would play with us and you can't believe how proud I felt to be able to go for a walk with a dog. I named Lotu actually Danny, but as he sometimes behaved a bit stupid (even though he was very intelligent), my father gave him the nickname Lotu (which is a sweet word for someone who is a bit stupid, but in a cute way) and it stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Lotu had this weird behaviour from his time in the wilderness, that when he got on a field, he actively had to look and dig for mice, rats etc. He would sometimes dig 50cm deep holes into our fields, dig not only with paws, but bite the toughest pieces of soil and grass off with his teeth. He would then sniff around in the whole he dug and make funny snoring noises and then sometimes suddenly jump to a random direction to try to catch a mouse. Sometimes this would last for hours. Our fields would be like a minefield of holes where one could break their leg. Lotu caught many mice, never ate them though. He preferred to throw them in the air and then catch them. I tried to rescue the mice from him, but when I tried it, he ate them.
During our walks he also had the tendency to try to run all the time and pull so much on the collar that he had no breath. Not that this would've stopped him. He would then sometimes jump in random directions without a warning. In the  beginning the walking lead was also short, so wherever he jumped, I fell after. Once I ended up in a half-frozen river. The other time he dragged me couple of meters behind him in a very muddy field. Oh the joy! What would I do, to be even dragged behind in mud by him?
During our walks in the forest we sometimes encountered deers and rabbits. Somehow I always noticed them before Lotu (well he was too busy sniffing everything and made too much noise to hear anything besides himself). Once he noticed them, he tried to run after them and barked and howled so that dogs in 10km radius could hear him.
Once at home, there was a lynx near our garden. Lotu dug himself out and went after it. We were sure, that we would lose him that day, but he beat that lynx and came home basically uninjured. That's how tough of a dog he was.
Often, when Lotu dedided that he wasn't walked enough by us, he did it by himself. No idea, what kind of rounds he did or how far he went, but sometimes he would go away for hours and then come back wagging his tail. He learned pretty soon that this resulted him being in a chain for couple of hours as a punishment, so he started to return from his rounds happily and then going straight to the chain waiting to be locked up happily. As the punishment didn't stop him, we had to barricade our fence with cement blocks in the places he dug himself our from. Well, it became an everyday activity and we needed many cement blocks. Then he started also bending the fence down and going over it..... That's when we gave up. He always got his chain-punishment though. I wonder how many puppies he made during his rounds in the village. He was, after all,  a man of the village. :) He did his walking rounds even when he could barely walk in the end. That's how tough of a dog he was.

As my father is a hunter, Lotu also decided to be a hunter at some point. Once my father had shot a deer near our house and as it was dark, he went looking for it with Lotu. Lotu of course found it and then obvously claimed it, so it was difficult for my father to clean the deer. After that, every time my father wanted to go hunting, Lotu also wanted to go. Of course, he wasn't taken. So once then, while my parents were in the sauna, he brought home a raccoon and showed it to my family and kept it half-alive with him, not letting anyone near it. But he was very proud of it, showed it off and everything. He did that once more. A proper wannabe hunting dog- when you won't take me, I will go and hunt myself!


Lotu also loved running after storks. As there was a nest of them near our house, it became his past-time hobby. The storks found it also funny and flew over our garden relatively low, Lotu barking like mad and running after them. The problem was always, that he didn't look where he ran. So he often ended up running into a wall with a big bang. Sometimes the storks would sit on our roof for may minutes and Lotu would bark the whole time and run around like mad.
It was the same with smaller birds. They liked to tease him- sit on the lowest branch of the tree, where Lotu couldn't reach them and then enjoy the show. And Lotu didn't give up either. It could go on for hours.
Lotu also liked eating bees that annoyed him. Sometimes he would look like out of a dental surgery- his mouth would get so swollen from all the stings from the bees and wasps he ate. He never learned not to do it though.....
Lotu also loved to play. I had a big stick for him, around which he would lock his teeth and try to pull it off of me. Sometimes we would both spin around (him in the air), because I tried to get him off the stick by turning around my axis. He wouldn't let go and in the end I always had to surrender the stick to him.
He also had his own basketball, which he ended up making a whole into so we played football with a half-filled basketball. He didn't understand the rules of football though, it was hard to get the ball back from him. He chewed through couple of such balls.
With lots of good food Lotu got a bit overweight and also got a bit lazy, so whenever he was peeing and could support his leg on something, he did it. Once he did it on a tree, where the roots had been eaten by some animal and the tree fell over when he supported his leg on it....My mum, who saw it, told that you couldn't even describe Lotu's face, when it happened.... :)

What I regret the most, is that I couldn't spend a lot of time with Lotu, as I moved away from home 2 years after I got him. Every time I came for a visit, he would run 3 rounds around the house at the top speed out of joy. He wouldn't leave my side. He would show his love by wiping his  whole body and ass into my trousers while walking by (I'm still convinced he tried to take me down like this) and then afterwards sitting on my feet so that I couldn't move. When thinking back about it, he only wanted me to stay home. Unfortunately my visits home became more and more rare as I went to uni and then abroad. At least I know he had a very happy life with my family. It also seems that he waited until I came again to Estonia so that I could say properly good-bye to him. I will remember my last good bye to him for forever. It was the morning when I had to go back to Austria (two days before he died) and he would only look at me from his sleeping place. He had this sad look as if he already knew that I would be going again. And then, when I kissed him on his nose, he didn't even lift his head towards me. He only looked at me as if saying good bye. And then I got the feeling that this was our last good-bye. I just didn't know that he would be gone so quickly. Oh how I wish I had had more time with him.  How I wished that!

May you enjoy your well earned pension, wherever you are, my dear Lotu!!!