Well we always knew the day would come when we would have to say goodbye. We knew it would be hard, but not this hard.

You always were smiling and happy, I think we miss that the most. If there was anything you loved more than us it was getting sticks at the park and heading home so proud that you have found your prize, we knew that you would never let them go, so we stopped trying to take them from you.

You are still here, we still move paper napkins and paper towels out of your reach. We still adjust our schedules so that one of us will be home with you. We still make sure that all of the gates in the back yard are closed so you can?t get out. We still look behind us when we walk through the house, because we know you will be following us. We still look for you at the end of the bed at night, we are still trying to figure out how your 23 pounds took more space than we did.

I will miss you thinking that I could actually stop a thunder storm, and snuggling between my legs on the couch was the way to do it, but you knew I would protect you from it somehow.

I still don?t know how you knew it was Sunday and time for an afternoon nap, or after five hours in the car you knew when we were ten minutes away from Andi's house.

We will miss your jumping up on the end of the couch to welcome visitors, and guarding the house from the front window from all of those unknown cats and dogs, somehow you didn?t care so much about squirrels and birds, maybe because there were so many of them. But you really thought that you could win confronting a bear or a deer.

When I am working at my desk there is an empty spot by my feet that I don?t think I will ever get used to, I always had to wear socks to stop you from licking my feet for hours at a time, I guess my feet will stay dry now.... too bad.

I guess we are done cleaning up the poop in the back yard as well, I did that for the last time yesterday, you would think that would at least be one positive, but even that we will miss.

Maybe if you could talk, you could have told us how you felt and maybe we could have kept you a bit longer, but then, maybe, you would have wanted to go sooner.

They say that dogs don?t have a soul or feelings, but then where did all of that love come from that you had. Maybe not a soul, but you were definitely one of God's creatures and one of his best creations.

Who knows maybe we will see you again.