Sadie came home in June of 1986, a fat black puppy with feet too big for her. Leonardo was three. For a long time I'm not sure he knew there was a difference between him and her. They shared a lot of cookies.

She was a Lab through and through. Water was the best thing in the world, sticks were the second best, and people were a close third. Every summer at Lake Wissota she would swim out after a stick for as long as Ned could keep throwing it, and Ned always quit first. She never learned to fetch a ball, never saw the point, but bring a stick and she was yours for the afternoon. When Rusty came along she took him in hand. He still does everything the way she showed him.

In her last year her face went gray and then white, and her hips began to go. She quit coming down to the lake and took up lying by the woodstove, which she'd always liked but now wouldn't leave. This picture is from Christmas Eve, on the plaid bed she wore flat. She still thumped her tail for everybody who walked by.

By February she couldn't get up the step from the deck, and some mornings she couldn't get up at all. On Tuesday, February 10, 1998, Ned and I took her to the vet together, and we held on to her while he put her to sleep. She was two months shy of twelve. Leonardo said goodbye to her in the kitchen that morning. In April, when the ground thawed, we put her ashes under the silver maple in the back yard, where she liked to lie in the summer.

It was the quietest house you ever heard for three months. Then we went to the humane society "just to look," and came home with Pepper. Sadie would have liked her. Sadie liked everybody.

If you've lost a good dog, I'm sorry. I know. Write me and tell me about yours, and I'll add a line for them here.