Once again, we lost a best friend. Our beloved yellow Lab, Abby, went to her real forever home a few days back.

Abby, age 13 years 8 months, our sweet little girl with a warm personality, left us after a long and loving life.

As every pet owner knows, that is no consolation to the reality that she is not beside our bed tonight or anyplace else where we shared our riches.

It seems ironic that given the healing and redemptive nature of these wonderful creatures, their life-spans are shorter than ours, so we pretend that one year equals 7 human years. Yea! Abby lived to almost 100... but it just doesn't seem that way.

Every pet owner knows that if this is the price of love, so be it.

Abby and Tess

She now joins her sister Tess, who we lost just eleven months ago. What a dynamic duo they were, both therapy dogs going regularly to the hospital and Hospice House. The two were also members of HOPE Animal Assisted Crisis Response serving so many people at national disaster relief service for six years.

Abby's Story: She was always a joy but she drew the short straw in personal health and good luck. She was a competitor and absolutely adored Agility, but before her first competition, she pulled an ACL. On the first day of release after surgery and months of recovery, she charged around our house with glee... and came back limping with another ACL on the opposite leg.

She was our champion dock diver and no dog could match her speed in the water to retrieve a thrown 'wubba.' 

She had three ACL surgeries then later, cancer. When that was taken care of, she suffered SARDS (Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration) causing permanent and irreversible blindness. In days her sight was gone... and so was her incredible confidence. That was four years ago when her life changed dramatically. It broke both of our hearts.

She loved her special walks down 'Abby Lane'--a path through the woods we named for her--which connected to 'Africa,' another journey in tree-lined underbrush where deer were plentiful and we were always on the look-out for lions and elephants. She knew those paths by name and smell. 

Then, as she aged, her hearing diminished. Through it all, we still shared joy and love... until this past week when she had the stroke that took her legs. She was definitely a champion in our lives.

Lily

Now it is up to Lily, our six-year-old Labra-Dane therapy dog, to fill all those roles. Thankfully, she is up to the job.

Is there another dog in our future? Why do we keep having these golden retriever dreams? Best answer: we'll see.


Abby, we will always miss you. Always. Go run now with Tess, Alix, Gretchen, Hershel the cat (or not), Hagar and Snert! We'll see you later in a more perfect place.