10 Green Bottles

I sometimes wonder if this nightmare will ever end, or if I am going to go from heartbreak to heartache without interruption until Jesus takes me home.

Copper has a habit of sleeping where I want to sleep. It's a game with her. She will curl up on my side of the bed, and when I tell her to move her soulful eyes will play with me as she moves... oh, so slow. But the very second I crawl under the blanket she and Rio will quickly wrap themselves around me, and fall asleep.

I'm a touch person with my dogs. I touch them every few minutes. I play with their ears, play with their heads. I am a "hands-on" person with animals. During this frigid weather I kept covering them with blankets. It's been very tough physically on us, but yesterday Copper seemed healthy, happy. Like all 2 yr old ( young ) dogs she ran and played in the snow , she looked through my bosses glass patio window leaping around with joy that she could see me. She came inside the shed and remained close to me. Her ears were warm, she wasn't shivering. Not an inkling of warning as to what was going to happen.
Yet when she stopped playing with Rio she curled up in her favorite spot on my bed, with her head inches from my knee, and simply died in her sleep due to a massive aneurysm.

This is becoming a horrible game with everything around me falling like a malicious 10 green bottles game. While I have sat in this shed desperately trying to get into a home I have lost Kontiki, a friend of 25 or more years, Isaiah, his young son, Oscar, my loyal sidekick, Franie and now Copper.

I had no idea that Copper had died. I told her to move over so I could get into bed, and when she didn't respond I lifted her still warm head and looked into lifeless eyes. Nothing I could do would resuscitate her. Trying to move her 70 lb live weight body through a shed packed with boxes in minus -10 degree temperatures, in the dark, reduced me to tears and established how alone I truly am.

I know that life is tough. No-one has to explain that to me. But in the name of humanity and heaven above why can't I have a home and normalcy like the human beings around me?
Ten green bottles, Hanging on the wall, Ten green bottles, Hanging on the wall, And if one green bottle should accidentally fall. There'll be nine green bottles hanging on the wall.