One
afternoon, nearly 2 years ago, while looking over some old
digital photos of our first Rottweiler “Zeus
von Maxius” sitting quietly, remembering the great times
we had, and the courageous fight he was secretly waging
against his pain, deep inside his bones. I struggled with my
own fight to hold back the tears, not because of what I’d
been forced to do, but because he deserved to live. Oh God,
why him?
You see, at the end, Zeus was 5 years old, and 130 lbs of pure
Rottweiler! He did not show his pain, but instead sucked it up
and soldier on. I too had pain of my own to deal with as I
suffered from a spinal fracture I received as the result of an
auto accident in which I was an unlucky passenger many years
earlier. On days when I was in too much pain to function at my
job, Zeus would come into the bedroom, jump up on the bed with
me and lay beside me, sometime for hours on end as if to let
me know that he was there to give me strength and to protect
me while I slept.
We did not find out that he was suffering from severe hip
displasia until the last year or so of his life when he began
to sigh in agony when he’d rise from his sleep, and struggle
to greet me each day when I’d return home from work as he
had done every day for 5 years. His effort to never leave his
post even with the most excruciating pain made me hurt for
him. My wife and I at that time, could not afford the $2500.00
per hip, surgery he required to ease his pain, so we knew what
we had to do.
Several
months later, there I sat, reliving the scenes over & over
in my head of the Doctor checking for a pulse after
administering the first of what would be 2 injections of
Phenobarbital into our beloved Zeus as my wife and I sobbed
and stroked his face, telling him, we’re so sorry man, we're
so very sorry!
After that, we decided to do what ever we could to save others
from suffering the same mental anguish we experienced on that
day. So, we began educating ourselves by reading books like
"The
Complete Rottweiler" by: Muriel Freeman, one the
finest books of it's kind, and researching everything we could
find about the breed on the Internet (and we still are). a
couple of months later, I purchased the domain name
“RottenRotty.Com” in memory of Zeus and with the idea that
we would spare no expense in bringing as much information on
the breed as we could to a single place on the Internet where
viewers from around the world could get their questions
answered and celebrate their love of the breed with others.
Over the past 2 years, my wife Deborah and
I have continuously tried to listen to the ideas and
suggestions of our viewers to formulate what you now see. We
hope that this site has helped others as much as it has helped
us, both in the knowledge we've gained as well as the
therapeutic value it has provided for us. Please, Enjoy ;-)
Mark Payne - Webmaster
