Our Toby

These photos were taken the day our poor puppy, Toby, died. At the top I found Toby in our room (where he knows he's not allowed to be) sleeping and using Elias' shirt for a pillow. Usually I would kick him out but for some reason that day I let him stay. He was just so cute. He always used to steel Elias' socks and bring them to his bed and sleep with them. He missed his dad while he was working. The rest I took later the same day while he was relaxing in the sun. Thanks God for letting us have these pictures of our cute puppy. As many of you have already heard our neighbors fed our dog rat poison a few days ago and he died. Elias and I were both at the house working when Toby went down to the lower part of the property. He had stayed with me all day so I let him leave (as he always did) to play with the other dogs for a little bit. About 20 minutes later my niece Doris came running to the house saying he was sick and had been poisoned. We ran down to my in-laws house and he was in a back room by himself and looked very bad. We did everything we could for him and took him to the vet. The vet gave him 2 different shots but said he probably had a large dose of the rat poison and there really was nothing we could do as it was already starting to affect his nervous system. He was shaking uncontrolably. We took him home and continued trying everything we could to help him. However, he died shortly after arriving home. We buried him that night down the hill from our house next to a recently planted pine tree. Needless to say I've been crying almost non-stop since it happened.

Thank you to everyone for your comments and prayers. We are both so very sad at the loss of our "baby" and even more saddened by the actions of our neighbors. Please continue to pray for their salvation and for our reaction towards them. We are trying to arrange a meeting with them and a judge from town but they have proven very difficult in the past. They have very hard hearts and now I'm sure are pretty much capable of anything. (this isn't the first horrible thing they've done to Elias' family). We hope to be able to show them the love of Christ by forgiving them. Pray for us to be a light to them and for our hearts to heal quickly. Thank you again to all of you!