Mr. Buddy's Final Escape

Among our friends and family, our beagle Buddy is something of a legend. Many stories get shared about our boy... how he escaped our fence on the third day we lived with him and ended up (two weeks later) being found in a pound in Vancouver, WA; how he managed to get an entire half-rack of ribs through our dog-door and consume them in the space of three minutes; how he led me on a merry chase across a golf course (while I was still in my robe and slippers); how he forced us to tile part of our family room and replace our pantry door... the list goes on and on.

Well, legends never fade but their earthly inspirations must eventually pass on. At about 3:30 this afternoon we were forced to put our dear, beloved boy to sleep. The past couple months have been pretty hard on him... his years of using his nose as shovel to move rocks and furniture out of the way had given him a bad vertebrae in his neck, and we knew that was going to cause some degeneration as he aged. It all seemed to snowball recently, though. In the end, he was in a lot of pain, and as hard as it was for us, we took the steps necessary to end it.

So, you may notice the "Buddy counter" on the right-hand side of the blog has changed... he may be gone from this earth, but he'll never be forgotten.

Hug your loved ones tight this new year's eve.

-Harold