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Oreo Harpel, age 9, crossed over the rainbow bridge on September 21, 2020. Oreo’s human siblings wrote a beautiful obituary in his honor.
We got Oreo as a pup from the Richmond Animal Shelter in the late fall of 2011. We had lost our mastiff that September and missed having the second dog, so I began looking on the internet at different shelters and fell in love with his little face. When he came to his new home, he had a lot to get used to. He now had a big brother (Dog) named Coal and a big brother (Cat) named Fred that would soon whip him into shape if he got too close to him. After he met his 4-legged brothers there were his 2-legged siblings he also had to meet; Iahn, Mak and Addy. Needless to say, all of us 2-legged family members fell in love with him immediately. Pit bulls can have a bad name, but this pit bull didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He really is the biggest baby of a dog I have ever met. All he wanted was to be loved, he had no personal bubble. If you were going to sit in a chair you better believe he was going to come and lay his 75-pound body on top of you like he was a lap dog. Also, if you had a blanket you better plan on sharing because he would twist and turn to get under the blanket with you. In the last year or so I got smart and started getting 2 blankets when I sat down so I could cover up quickly with one before he jumped onto my lap then I would have another blanket just for him. He would stay under the blanket so long that eventually he would be panting under the blanket, and then he would get up, go to the floor, and just fall over to cool off. He didn’t lay down; he fell over. LOL
Oreo was so emotionally attached to us. We went to Africa on a 2 week mission trip and had someone stay at the house with him because we thought that would be better than kenneling him, we came home and he had literally eaten a whole cushion off of our couch. We started camping and thought it would be best to take Oreo with us so we did and if he was not right next to us he would knock over anything in his way to get to us, then I went to the shower house to shower and left him at our campsite with other people and the whole time I was showering I could hear him crying as loud as he could until I got back by him. Oreo loved playing in the hose, and he liked bathes too, especially getting blow dried after his bath. He would just jump straight up onto the bathroom counter and let me dry him.
He loved to go on walks and car rides. The car rides sometimes took him to get his nails cut and boy did he hate that. We always laughed because he would scream the whole time, they cut his nails. He was not mean; he was just a big baby. But after his nails got cut, he always got to go to McDonalds and get either an ice cream or a hamburger that he would have completely gone in 3 seconds. It was rather impressive.
Another impressive story about Oreo is that about 3 different times somehow, we had gotten a bird in our house and this dog was crazy about catching them. One went in the chimney and he tore down the gate around the front of it and pulled out the logs in the fireplace trying to get to the bird. Unfortunately for the bird once he came out of the chimney Oreo would jump into the air and quickly snag the bird. Then the fun was to get him to drop the dead bird from his mouth. He was so proud he had caught it that he would hold it for the longest time and there was no prying it out of his mouth. One day I was working in my office and turned around and he was sitting at the other desk up in the office chair.
If we were having dinner and someone got up because they were done or just to get something if we left the seat out it was nothing for him to jump right up in it.
As you can tell Oreo has left us with many great memories and we will forever miss him. Coal and Fred both passed away a few years ago and Oreo got a new 4-legged sibling named Hope. Hope is a girl and for sure acts like it. She would boss him around and play with him unless he played back then she would tuck her tail and hide under the table. We know that Fred and Coal met Oreo as he crossed the rainbow bridge and they are chasing squirrels, rabbits, and birds together.
RIP Oreo till we meet again you will be so missed on this side. We love you! Cancer Sucks!!
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