We stopped by the property
so he could see where he was going to stay.
He finally choked down his piece of Jimmy Dean Maple Sausage….
more as a gesture to me than anything else.

He couldn’t get out of the pick up when we got to the vet….
but the smells of the road… windows open…
seemed to ease his pain along the way.

I held his head and told him he was a good dog.
He held my stare with big loving eyes
while the dose was given, there, in the back of the truck.
And then, without a peep, a better man than I, his face screamed
“Thank You”…and he was gone.

To the sky, Gandalf……………
your ashes will be windblown to
the Alaskan wild.

Lawrence from Alaska