Playtime is at 10:30 p.m....Run forever...Love you

It is with great sorrow that we said goodbye yesterday to a much loved member of our family. Our wonderful 12 1/2 year old dog Lady left us yesterday to go and join her friend Pepper.

Lady was born on August 4th 1998, and became a member of our family 3 days before she turned 6 weeks old. Of all the little puppies that we looked at from her litter, she was the one that time and again made a beeline for us. She was such a little ball of fur, it's hard to believe that she was ever that small.

I remember sitting one night in our family room and watching t.v., when all of a sudden we could here Lady growling away. We looked for her and all we could see was her little wiggling bum sticking out from under our couch. When my dh got down to check on what she was doing he found a big bone from another dog that had been in our house. It was huge for her and she had this look on her face like she had just hit the mother load! She tried so hard to cart that bone around lol.

Lady may have been the family dog, but she was definitely my husband's girl. She did anything and everything for her daddy. Every night at 10:30 Lady would find her ball (she could be in a deep sleep and her internal clock would wake her up at 10:30 every night. The only time that changed was for daylight savings lol), and start bugging the dh to take her outside. In later years, after she had gotten arthritis, she still managed to go and chase balls with her dad...and mom's new puppy Molly. By this time she had lost a lot of her hearing and could only see shadows, so Molly would grab the ball and jump around barking in front of Lady until Lady gave chase to get the ball away.

Lady loved to camp...I remember many happy weekends spent away tenting or tent trailering with our wonderful girl. She loved the great outdoors...as long as we were out in it with her. And she loved the water...we would throw the ball over and over into a lake and she would happily go and swim for it and bring it back. We had to be so careful because she would keep going back and forth as many times as you would throw it no matter how tired she was. Our wonderful girl loved to do anything...as long as it was with us.

On the day that we said good bye, my dh wrote on one of Lady's new balls...Playtime is at 10:30 p.m., Run Forever, Love Dad. That is why I used that as my title...may you play forever Lady.

Sleep well our beautiful girl...you will be missed...until we meet again, Love Mom, Dad, Josh and Kat.