Author: jeanetteg

Boone has been gone three months now, but nearly every day he manages to send me some sort of message from the Bridge letting me know he’s never very far away.

This weekend it was butterflies.

Boone used to LOVE chasing butterflies on our summer walks. I was never quick enough to capture a picture of him in mid-air trying to catch them, but it was a sight to see him leaping up. Fortunately for the butterflies, Boone never caught them.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, so I took my crochet to the back yard while Tuck chewed on a stick. He’s shown zero interest in the Jolly Ball that was Boone’s favorite toy, so it sat still at Tuck’s feet. Something caught my eye and when I glanced towards where Tuck was laying, a bright yellow butterfly landed on the ball and flicked its wings a few times. Tuck showed some interest in the ball then! But like Boone, he wasn’t quick enough to catch the butterfly, so it flew safely away.

Later that afternoon we took our second walk of the day and spotted not one, but two more butterflies along the path.

And last night, my friend and neighbor texted me pictures of a rainbow over the small airport in our town. Rainbows are my Lexi’s way of reminding me that she’s never far away either (we lost her in March 2015 at the age of 13). So I texted my neighbor back that Boone had sent butterflies to us on Sunday. She responded that she’d had a big butterfly in her dog yard on Sunday, too. I told her that Boone was making his daily walk (we always walked past her home).

And onto Tuck, Boone’s earthly sidekick. I’m pretty sure Boone has had conversations with him about how to make us smile and laugh.

When he’s not pretending to be a mountain goat, he’s learning how to snuggle up next to me on the couch – just like Boone used to do.

And of course, where would we be without a sleepy selfie 😉

I’m looking forward to a summer full of rainbows and butterflies to remind me that my two favorite “black and tans” are forever by my side and teaching our newest “black and tan” how to make us smile 🙂

Whenever I’m having a down day, I think Boone sends a signal to his heavenly sidekick, Tuck, and asks him to do something goofy to put a smile on my face.

He must have sent a signal Saturday because Tuck introduced us to his modified version of Boone’s famous rock-retrieving (Tuck prefers the little spruce tree cones that fall) and demonstrated his skillful spins :-).

And yes, this put a smile on my face.

https://www.facebook.com/AKJeanette/videos/10212855099110682/

Today I decided to work my way through my “book closet” and found these pics of our first official foster, way back in the early 90s when we were stationed in Virginia.

At the time I worked at a boarding kennel attached to a veterinary clinic, and “Cricket” was brought in as a days old baby. She was to be euthanized because she was born without a paw and part of her foreleg. One of the vets brought her over to the kennel side of the business asking if someone would bottle feed and raise her til she was old enough to be adopted to the right family.

So my hubby and I became her caretakers for the first 8 weeks of her life. That missing paw and foreleg didn’t stop her at all. She mastered the hop at an early age and terrorized our big dogs. She made us laugh when she’d get a case of puppy zoomies, and while Cassi and Chrissy were in pursuit, Cricket would slide her tiny body under a chair or the couch and just grin at them.

The family that adopted her sent us these pics of her taken with her big brother in 1993. If you look closely you can see the stub of her right leg that was missing the paw.

And it dawned on me that we had a Tripawds in our life 25 years ago. 💕🐾

Most everyone knows that Boone lost his fight with cancer and crossed the Bridge on Tuesday, March 14th. We weren’t at all ready to say goodbye to this special soul, but he let us know he was ready and it would have been selfish and unfair to him to “try one more thing…”

The first week was almost unbearable for us. Boone had such a big personality and his loss left a hole much bigger than we anticipated. I’ve had dogs my whole life, and I’ve said goodbye to a lot of dogs over the years, but saying goodbye to Boone was absolutely the hardest. Who would have thought that of all of our dogs, this tall, silly happy boy would be the one to completely steal our hearts. But he did.

This video popped up as a memory on my Facebook timeline from April 15th, 2016 and the tears started flowing again. Boone LOVED springtime when the snow was gone so he could return to “rock retrieving.”

https://www.facebook.com/AKJeanette/videos/10209088498868030

But I know Boone is watching over us.

Two weeks after he crossed the Bridge, he sent us a little foster dog that we named Tuck. We had no intentions of bringing another dog into our lives so soon, but this little guy appeared at our local rescue needing an urgent foster. We couldn’t say no.

And the following week, Tuck had completely won us over. We were officially “foster failures.”

Tuck does seem to have some “Bad Dog Bundle” characteristics, but he’s totally different than Boone. And that’s a good thing. Boone was special. Unique. And no dog will ever take his place.

I was watching a show the other night, and one of the characters was talking about how life goes on after someone you love dies.

She said “Life goes on. It’s not wrong, just different.”

So our different life, without Boone, goes on.

Sharing some random pics from Boone’s day today.

Started off his day as my ever-present office assistant. He’s got the lounging/sleeping thing down pretty well 😉

Then he moved to the sunshine while I had lunch.

After our hop, he surveyed the neighborhood out our front window. The same window where he went nose-to-nose with a young moose last week. Thankfully his bark told the moose to bug out, which it did. Phew. The dead of winter in Alaska would not be the time to replace a window.