RuDibaker Markmon aka Rudi

2004 - 2018

Rudibaker Markmon #Rudibakermarkmon
AKA Rudi & fondly referred to as Ru-Ru Muffinz
Born in a Russian Puppymill on 9-29-04 & Went back to God 9-14-18
The little boy who never grew up & my #1 doggie son

I haven’t been able to post anything about Rudi until today. I think it is because if I post anything then it makes it real like my friend, Shannon Mandel told me. It has been a week now & the pain is still as raw & terrible as the day he died. Last Friday, September 14th the house was so quiet in the morning & as I realized it was already 6:30am & I had not heard Rudi stir (when he’s usually howling at 4:30am to get up & go potty) I went up to his crate to check on him. I have only had to crate Rudi for the past few months because of potty issues, mobility & his blindness - the perfect trifecta for terrible accidents. I touched him & he didn’t respond & I noticed he was definitely breathing. I shook him & he still did not respond. I screamed his name & he didn’t respond - I knew he wouldn’t as he had become deaf within the past year. I reached in & picked him up & immediately realized something was terribly wrong as he was listing fiercely to his right & his front legs were stiff as a board of wood directly out in front of him. I held him close to my body & realized he was a lot hotter than normal. I quickly brought him downstairs & outside to see if he had to go potty. I put him on the grass & took off his diaper but realized he could not stand, could not keep his weight equal & he couldn’t even sit & the listing to the right increased. He plopped on the ground, stiff legged. I scooped him up & cradled him & ran for my phone. I knew this was it. He had either had a stroke or his spine now was completely gone. For anyone who didn’t know - Rudi’s spine was dying… it had been going for the past almost 1.5 years. There is nothing you can do but give prednisone & pain meds when the time comes. I have known all this time that Rudi was terminal but I carried on like he would always be here. I called my mom, Deb Cody & Tommy, Thomas Green to come help me take Ru-Ru to the vet’s to be euthanized because I could not go alone with my heart of all hearts. That was the hardest sentence to say & I was clearly hysterical & definitely not too understandable because I was not ready but Ru-Ru’s body had quit. It was obvious his organs were also shutting down as well. I had no choice, this was too much to watch him suffer where he couldn’t even move his legs & put his body only in an awkward listing position. I put him in a doggie bed & covered him up with my favorite blankie & his Remi came & sat with him giving him kisses & licking his face & neck. My mom & Tommy helped me take him to Dr. Cassandra Ann Jozefine's office. Although his body was completely done, his spirit was still strong & I don’t think he wanted to go as he gave a little heavy panting at the end. When he left me, I felt this horrific pain reel itself through my body… my little puppy was gone. I can not leave my dogs unattended to without the utmost dignity & care for their remains so we took him to Final Gift in Rhode Island to be cremated - they call it private witnessed cremation. I made the mistake of not telling them that i didn’t want to see his body when they put him into the incinerator, I just wanted Tommy to make sure it was him with a peek & then they could put him in as we watched them do it & push the start button. When we walked in, the man who was helping had Rudi’s sweet face propped up from his blanket & I saw my puppy, my beautiful puppy’s face & I died a thousand deaths… a thousand daggers into my heart. I grabbed his sweet face, now cold, & cried & kissed him goodbye several times while sobbing uncontrollably. The pain was like a thunderclap to my heart, the worst absolute worst pain I have ever felt in my life. I suppose in hindsight, it befit Rudi to leave me with the worst pain I have ever felt because he came like a bolt of lightning running full speed into my life down a Brooklyn, NY street pouncing on me sticking his mouth full of rocks directly onto my face & inserting several rocks & dirt into my mouth… and that was my love at first sight - the puppy I had longed to adopt & have for my very own… he brought me the greatest happiness I have ever felt on that day, April 1, 2005. I will always be so very thankful to his foster dad for selecting me to be his mommy… my Ru-Ru was the love of my life & his middle name was for his foster parents. Thank you Mark Hilzenrath… thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. I have always felt that I won the lottery when my Rudi came into my life!

I wanted to tell you a little more about the spirt of my Ru-Ru, my little warrior. My boy was born with a corneal dermoid so he had extra skin on his eye that eventually I had removed because it was growing eyelashes. He also had this knack of getting into trouble like no one else… when he was a year old, my ex husband was home feeding him carrots as a snack & a schoolbus pulled up & he barked. Somehow, he managed to get a piece of carrot stuck in his windpipe & it wouldn’t come out… my ex husband called the police but they couldn’t help, then he called me at work & I screamed get him to the vet’s office! The police officer gave him an escort & they got Rudi to see Dr. Beebee who managed to dislodge the carrot by hanging Rudi upside down & going in with forceps to retrieve the tiny piece stuck in his windpipe. He said we were very lucky as Rudi almost died several times, loosing consciousness when he couldn’t breathe while he was trying to dislodge it. Rudi continued on with his crazy puppy episodes by being so rambunctious that he ran into his grama’s sofa & broke his toe. We took him to a vet, who I won’t mention, that recommended we cut off Rudi’s toe instead of casting it because he said Rudi would have arthritis in his toe if we didn’t. Well I looked at him like he had 3 heads - how are you going to lop off a toe without first trying to save it? Come to find out later the vet was also an army combat medic so perhaps some of his thinking about Rudi’s toe came from battlefield experience - who knows? Anyways, Rudi got casted & recasted one more time & it healed without any issues. So much for lopping off a toe… if you think a vet is crazy, well he probably is. Rudi was also a severe allergy dog & we had to go through lots of allergy testing & eventually came up with a raw diet thanks to Charlotte Creeley who was the first to educate me on raw diet feeding. My poor boy suffered time to time as well because he was allergic to grasses too - hence he was the notorious white t-shirt dog! We did allergy shots that never really helped. When Rudi was 3, I noticed eye changes to one eye. I brought him to Dr. Stuhr & he said Rudi had early onset cataracts. That started something that would affect him for the rest of his life. Rudi had countless surgeries but in short, his cataract surgery to one eye was unsuccessful & he went into glaucoma, which I researched a lot about & found a doctor in NY that helped me come up with homeopathic remedies to assist. I was able to keep Rudi’s eye in his head until he was about 6 & then the glaucoma had gotten to a point of no return. Rudi had also run into my ex husband’s leg & it burst causing an ulcer. Rudi’s eye was removed & life changed for the first time. At 6.5 years his 2nd eye got bad with a cataract so instead of surgery, which would mean glaucoma would start a lot faster, I opted to treat him homeopathically & I was successful in avoiding glaucoma until Rudi reached 11.5 years of age. We then fought glaucoma with conventional medicine & homeopathic medicine for another year & then Rudi lost his second eye around 12.5 years of age. I blamed myself a lot for Rudi’s eye issues because I thought perhaps the allergy shots I gave him caused it or I shouldn’t have done the vaccines that I did when he was a puppy (which now I choose a totally different regimen). I found out via a blood DNA that Rudi was, in fact, not all French Bulldog that he was a mix & he had the genes from both sets of parents for early onset juvenile cataracts. That made me feel a lot better but it also lit a fire under my feet because Rudi was a Russian puppy mill import puppy (that was sold out of a Brooklyn pet store, purchased by someone that couldn’t handle his energy & later surrendered to rescue), which meant that those fuckers in Russia were breeding blind dogs!!! Special place in hell reserved for people who breed for blood money & breed without conscience!!! Rudi had numerous, numerous surgeries to remove tumors - which, thank God were all benign & successful. He was on operated numerous times on by Dr. Alisa Grace H. Jaroszynski, whom also delivered my Remi & Rori - bred by fellow rescuer, vet tech, dog trainer & respectable breeder who also shows her Frenchies, Sherry Coddington. We met Sherry when she did the home visit for Rudi's adoption. He also had combatted ear hematomas several times & at the end of his life his ears were even necrosing probably from his body organs shutting down. All these things & my stoic puppy never complained… he never showed pain the way some dogs would… he had the spirit of a fucking spartan warrior reborn into a little dog’s body.

If you are a dog parent, you will understand my next sentence. Rudi was my heart dog, love of my life. My boy would give the best full-body leg wrap hugs where he would just curve his whole body right around your leg to let you know that he loved you. He could look at you & melt your heart. Rudi was also like a brother to Audra Allen's Wilbur & Lord Chumley, both whom he loved & enjoyed being around. He was foster brother to tons & tons of foster pups & he would take each under his wing & show them the ropes. He was the best brother to his best friend Remi & did his best to be a good brother to his angry little brother Rori, whom resisted his brotherly love until later in life. He was first foster brother & later brother to Libi our little dragonfly who passed in October 2017. Rudi inspired me through his adoption to start my own rescue, Green Fur Kidz. He was my best partner in crime & sat by my side through many terrible events & provided comfort that I can not put into words. The worst being when I got the first whiffs of infidelity. I remember sitting in shock & anger. I looked at Rudi and said “who the hell does he think he is…. doesn’t he know who I am?” The look on Rudi’s face when I said that was like “yeah, he doesn’t know you’re Melissa m-effing Garthwait!”. He just knew how to give the right kind of look or attention at the right time. Far be it from me to cry over a man & it only got worse when I found wet t-shirt contest shirts in his travel laundry. I think Rudi probably would have helped me toss all his shit out the windows if he could have reached them, he had the thumbs with his crazy dew claws but just not the height… that’s just the kind of loyalty my puppy had. Rudi wasn’t that relative that would gossip behind your back & tell lies nor was he that fake friend who used you for their own agenda. He was loyal until the end. Rudi loved life & he loved doing so many things. The last two years of his life, he wasn’t able to do many of those things sadly. I have so many stories I want to share & could go on forever but I don’t think many people have kept reading so I will tell this one story that I carry in my heart for the rest of my days. We often would take car rides together & I remember one of the first times he drove with me. He was just a little puppy about 6 months old & it was snowing. The road we were travelling to get home was covered in snow & no one was on the street. I was driving very slow & the snow was coming down in huge fluffy dream-like snowflakes. It was so very quiet & my car was brand new & just drifted through the snow without any effort nor sound. I glanced over at my puppy and he was just staring at the snow coming down with this face of utter awe… he looked at me & looked back at the sky full of snowflakes & then looked back at me as if to say “wow mommy this is really cool! i’ve never seen fluffy stuff before!”. I will never forget the innocence of that moment. My sweet, sweet puppy. I am not sure if we get to reincarnate but if we do, I can only pray that we are together again… because I would take the pain of loosing you through an eternity of life cycles if only to have the love of you for all life cycles. If, instead, we go some place after we die… I will find you my Ru-Ru Muffinz… mommy will find you. You are forever my puppy… forever in my heart because love never dies.