Mom of Three: Shadow

Ahh.... my heart is breaking. We lost our precious Shadow two weeks ago. He had been getting sicker the last few weeks, and he just couldn't fight it any longer. We are all so sad...but, Brad, Erin, Julie, Joe and I all got to be with him when he went. I really think he liked that. He loved us all so so much, and we loved him.

Shadow danced into our world as a five week old puppy. He was so small that he fit on a 12" square of tile in our basement. The stairs perplexed him as he would look up as if to say, "really? you want me to climb that?"

Julie and Shadow when she brought him home.

As Shadow grew, it became obvious that he was going to be a handful, but a loving handful at that. When Cookie was alive, he would wait patiently for her to go outside with him and play. He didn't always stay outside, but he seemed to like to lay in the sun on the hottest day of summer. We all remembered the time we cleaned his kennel and it was a very hot summer day. The sun was beating down on his kennel, but he stayed in it as if to say... "this is mine and I'm not leaving !!"

Shadow was a good listener. He listened to everything Julie would say to him and respond in a way that only Shadow could respond, with his head down on your hands and a bitter whining as if to say -- I feel your sadness, joy, pain, (fill in the blank). When Julie went away to college, he was always glad to see her come home and would greet her in this manner. When she would pack to go back to school, he sometimes would take her clothes out of her suitcase as if to say "please stay". He always got nervous when Erin and I would go to Kansas City for the weekend and we started moving suitcases. I hated leaving him, but it was better than putting him in a kennel. He hated kennels, and would bark himself voiceless.

He was fiercely protective of us, so much so that when anyone came to the house that he didn't know, he would bark at them. Even though this was so annoying, I really did understand why he did it.

He never jumped on furniture or chewed up anything. He was a retriever through and through, except he hated water. When he was a young dog, he ran from the house one day and straight to the pond behind our neighbor's house. He was greeted by a flock of geese who lifted their wings and squawked loudly at him. He never went in the water again.

I will miss Shadow greeting me when I get home from work, and laying in the middle of all of us during family gatherings. He would patiently lay under the table when we ate hoping for just a morsel to drop from our table. When my Aunt Wee Woe was staying at our house, he stayed by her side all day and even stood still for her to brace herself on him. When she died, he truly mourned her too.

Sunbathing with Julie the day before her wedding

I will always miss seeing him look out the window at us whenever we drove away. But he patiently waited for us and was so happy to see us, and we were happy to see him. I never knew a heart could hurt so much.
Shadow. We all love you and miss you. We will never EVER forget you. Rest in peace sweet boy.

Love... Mom, Dad, Katie, Chantz, Julie, Joe, Erin, and especially Sam and Yadi.