My wife stopped by Salt Lake County Animal Services and adopted a little Poodle/terrior mix as a companion for our little Maltese who lost her best friend a few weeks earlier. The Maltese was pining away, refusing to eat or drink and we were afraid she would be the next in our family to leave us.

We named the new dog “Corky”. We should have named her “Dinky Dau” ’cause she was nuts.

When the wife and I were gone, she would run through the house uprooting flowers and chewing on my wifes record album collection. It took a couple of years for her to lose that “wild” behavior, but she had grown into our hearts and we loved her regardless of her flaws. She was my “laser” kid. She would chase the laser from wall to wall and try to dig it up from the bottom of the water bowl.

She would sit and watch our every movement as if she were studying for an exam.

We had her for 13 wonderfull years. February 2007 she took a turn for the worse and my wife and I knew her end was close. If was February 13th and we could no longer stand to see her suffer on our behalf and decided that we would have her euthanized the following day.

As many times as we had done this in the past, It broke our hearts nonetheless, and we noticed that the decisions were getting much harder as we got older. These were our kids who we raised and cared for and who gave us so much in return.

February 14th, Valentines Day, 8 years to the day I lost my own mom, and we were trying to prepare ourselves to send our beautiful little girl home.

My wife was reluctantly getting ready for work as our litle girl laid on the bed with labored breathing. I left the room for a second and when I came in the room, my little girl was as relaxed as I have ever seen her.

My wife continued getting ready for work and I reached over to stroke my little girls head and immediately realized that she was no longer there, but was now running through open fields, free of any pain or suffering. Me and my wife cried like little kids… I scooped “Corky” up into my arms and held her and whispered how much she meant to us and how much we loved her. And then I took her outside and placed her next to our little Maltese “Scooter” who had left us a few years earlier at the age of 11 and who no longer pined.

Thank you Mark for allowing us space to pay tribute to the kids in our lives.

Guy from Utah