My family adopted Ursela in 1997 from the home of a rancher who had found her near a freeway on ramp.  She was about a year old.  The rancher couldn’t keep her because the horse flies on the ranch were eating her alive.  We brought her home and she instantly became one of the family.  Our family later adopted two other dogs.  Ursela was instrumental in teaching the other two dogs how to defend the property by barking at the fence.  In October of 2009 Ursela kept falling down in the drive way.  I took her to the vet and the doctor said she wouldn’t last more than two weeks.  She had deteriorating nerves in her hips.  The doctor gave us some steroids and suggested that we give her motion sickness pills.  After a week she was good as new.  She had the habit of waking up at 5am to wait near the fence because she knew that the neighbor let his dogs out and she liked to socialize.  I said good bye to her this morning and went to work.  Lately when I come home from work she doesn’t hear me till my truck is right next to her then she looks up at me while lying on her cushion.  Her hearing isn’t what it used to be.  I came home today for lunch and she was there on her cushion and the other two younger dogs, who usually run up to me, were standing over Ursela.  I immediately knew that Ursela had passed away.  She lasted 7 months longer than the vet predicted and although she was slower than in her youth she was very happy and playful to the very end.  She will be dearly missed.  I took her to be cremated and will place her in a granite urn shaped like a rock near her favorite tree.

— Roberto from Mission Hills, CA