Hi Mark. I haven’t had a chance to read your book yet but enjoy listening to you talk about it on your Podcasts. I want to tell you about our Bear. He was part Black Lab and part Newfoundland. My wife got Bear at a shelter when she was 14. As she walked into the kennel all of the dogs were jumping and crying to get out but their was one dog sitting there silent and that was Bear. My wife said ‘that’s the one’. Bear lived a long life for a dog his size. 15 years.

I came home from work one day and my wife told me Bear didn’t come downstairs today. We knew he was slowing down in his old age but this concerned us. I carried him down so he could be with the family and while we were eating he got sick. My wife and I looked at each other not wanting to alarm the kids and knew we had to take him to be seen immediately. I carried Bear out to my wife’s car and she brought him to an emergency vet up in Manchester, NH. They took X-Ray’s and they knew right away that it wasn’t good. Bear was riddled with tumors. This poor dog must have been in so much pain and yet we never heard a whimper out of him. Bear couldn’t stand or walk but when I entered the room he was at the vets he wagged his tail just as he did everyday. My wife and I sat with him as the doctor did what had to be done. It was my wife’s first experience with death and the first time I had to make a decision like that.

We miss Bear everyday and dig out pictures of him often as well as having a framed picture of him in the living room with the inscription “If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I’d climb up to heaven and bring you back again. ” We now have a Golden from a pet store and a Plott Hound from a shelter. Thank you Mark for this page!!!!!

Tim from NH