Today we lost Daisy, the last of our pack. She was preceeded by the first of our pack, Sport, who passed at home a few falls ago, and our later addition, Jet, who left us last spring.

We found her while fetching dog food and such for Sport. The pet store happened to be having an adoption day and gave us a border collie named Xena to walk around the store. She was sweet and patient and sat when we stopped, didn't tug at the leash, liked attention and was settled when we tended to our shopping. How could we say no?

Well, we said "no" to the name, and promptly changed it to "Daisy."

She fit in the house with Sport quite nicely. They got along well and quickly reinforced each other in the pack. She was a little differently behaved than in the store, but after a while she settled down and was a good dog for a long, long time.

When we first got the dogs, we kenneled them while we were gone. This was both to keep them comfortable but also to make up for our lack of time at home to train them. Daisy really didn't like being in a kennel. She'd go in without complaint, sit down and watch you lock the door, and watch us head up the stairs. When we'd get home, she'd be out of the kennel to greet us. We tried putting extra clips on the door, and finally put her smaller kennel into the other dog's bigger kennel to successfully keep her caged.

We got her on video breaking out of her kennel; it took her just a few seconds. She'd wait for a few minutes, presumably until she was sure we'd left the house. Then she'd work on the lock and clips until she got enough room to squeeze out. Once out, she'd lay on the ground outside the kennel, occasionally wandering around but always returning, until we returned. Shortly after, we stopped kenneling the dogs at all.

Not long after being freed from the kennel she ate a small stuffed gnome doll. She ate everything but his little leather jacket and the little silicon beads that had previously given him his stuffing. The beads were spread around all of the rooms in the house, on practically every horizontal surface. The floor, tables, chairs, shelves, television, desk, kitchen and bathroom counters, beds...everything had a fair spread of little beads on it.

Five or so years after the gnome, we remodelled our house. We cut the roof off and added a second floor. On the main floor, some rooms and walls were moved around and floors resurfaced. The construction job ended with a thorough cleaning, and all of the rooms were painted.

Months after all of that the last beads were found.

Her last big adventure was at an off-leash dog park, where through a moment of crowd and panic she and a bigger fluffy dog got into a few-second scuffle. Daisy had been sitting between the missus' feet while the missus handed biscuits to some of the other dogs. One of the other dogs got too close or aggressive or something, because Daisy lashed out and the dogs bit and growled and wrestled until I and another guy were able to take them apart. Blood was all over, and dripping rapidly from Daisy's ears. The other dog had had its big maw around her head and in the struggle or separation had managed to split both of her ears. We took her to a vet, and they stitched her up. One ear had a permanent split in it because the stitching wasn't dead on, but she never seemed to mind.

She'd been camping with us, had some overnights at grandma's house, and was generally loved by all. She never bit a person, or ate another decoration or toy, though she once took a permanent and perfectly semi-circular bite out of a sandal strap.

It'd been a few years we've been saying she might not make it until or through winter. In the recent months she'd been finding it hard to stand, especially on smoother surfaces. She had orthopedic issues, as the vet called them, and was really not doing much more than sleeping in her dog bed in the corner of the family room, running to or from the dog area in the yard, eating, or sleeping on her dog bed in the bedroom when she could make it up the stairs. She was always kind with the kiddo, and it was that and just not wanting to make the call that kept us from making that final trip to the vet.

We chatted with the vet, and the conversation assured us we weren't making a selfish decision, and that we were probably going to have to make the decision soon. She was in pain, evidenced by the fact that pain relievers we gave her gave her relief, and she had lost a lot of muscle and range of motion in her hind legs. He suggested that we weren't really helping her live, but instead were just keeping her from dying, and that while she was still sweet and gentle and calm, it was probably just continuing years of conditioning, and that her loss of sight and hearing were more stressful than our comfort efforts were comforting. Unlike Jet before her, we stayed and participated in the procedure, which was quick and seemed completely painless. Our vet was compassionate and reverent, had prepared us for the whole procedure, and was helpful througout.

The pack is thinned, and we think we'll be without a dog for a while.