Mark,

I have enjoyed your discussions about Sprite, and thought I would share mine. My wife and I started our life together with a golden Pomeranian that we named “Spook” because when we picked him up, he made all kinds of funny noises difficult to describe. My mother asked that we go to the shelter with her first to see if there were any Poms available. Since we were in an apartment at the time, we had to have a small dog. Needless to say, my mother found a shy puppy in the back of a cage, and immediately fell in love with “Lady” – a shepard/bassett mix puppy. It sounds awful, but Lady was a gorgeous dog. She looked like a small shepard with short legs (some even confused her with a korgy), very bright and a wonderful travel companion as my folks traveled a lot in their car for business as furniture accessory reps. Lady and Spook became best buddies, and we often had them together. The minute you mentioned “spook” to Lady, her tale immediately commenced to furiously wagging. One day we went over to the folks house and spook had passed away. The disappointment on Lady’s face was palpable and until Lady passed away, she was always looking for spook. Spook got sick mostly due to old age. He bounced back once, but it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to make it another time. My wife and I had dinner and made the decision that we would have to put him down in the morning and how to handle it with the kids. When we returned home, Spook had answered our prayers and passed away. I buried him in our back yard, and our family had a little memorial servce the next day. We cried and we hugged and we counted our blessings for having him, and we also counted our blessings that he was able to leave us in the manner that he did.

Trey from MO