Jewel...

It's been a week since we lost you. It's been a week since my impatience cost you your life. I wish every day, every minute I could go back in a time machine and change that day, change just those few short minutes that shattered everything.

We only had the privilege of having you in our lives for one year, one full season, but in that year you touched our lives and hearts in so many ways. Our house is so still without your crazy busy energy, always quick to engage someone in a game of tag, or chase, stealing Tabitha's rabbit fur change purse every chance you got, or sniffing out food and getting into it, no matter how high it was placed, or how much you were NOT supposed to be into it, or just snuggling into a lap, or on a bed (warm bodies and pillows preferred).

Doing everything you could to try and go home with Grandpa Herzog, you knew you had him wrapped around your delicate little paw.

If I could just go back, and have you here again with us, I wouldn't begrudge cleaning up the garbage you would strew all over the house, every single time the garbage slider wasn't pushed fully into the cupboards, or the disaster you would turn my house into, in your frantic attempts to find us, when we left you home alone and you escaped your kennel (how did you do that anyways?)

You hated to be left alone, always game to go somewhere, so long as it was with us. Didn't matter what mode of transportation it may be. While riding in the van, you amused yourself, and us, snapping at flies, chewing up my green peppers when they just "happened" to roll your way under the van seat.... rolling down the automatic windows whenever it suited you best so you could let your floppy ears flap in the breeze, busy little nose sniff-sniffing, then taking a nap up on the dash like a kitty, silly girl.

It's why it hurts so much to have to have buried you alone now, when being alone was something you hated to be, so much. We buried you next to Old Kye, and Sabu.

I wish I would have gotten a video of you climbing the ladder to the kids' playcenter, and then sliding down the slide with them. A reminder to do things right away, and not put them off-because tomorrow doesn't always come.

You won Leroy's heart, though he wouldn't say as much, when you growled, so low and fierce at him, when he would come home late at night and peek in at Jesse. We knew every bone in your little body was fiercely loyal.

You weren't "just a dog" you were one of the family, which is why this is so hard. You were so young and had your whole life ahead of you-Jesse always asked "how old will Jewel live to be? How old will I be then?" We looked forward to watching you grow up with the kids.

Your name rolled off the kids' tongues so many times a day, especially from Jesse, and usually with humour and love.

Jesse misses you so much, he says he has trouble sleeping without his Jewel. I know he misses giving you rides on the quad, and dreaming about chasing rabbits with you.

Everything happened so suddenly, and with so much finality-no chance to turn it around, or say goodbye, or process it, and I was the cause of it-not like with Sabu, where I knew I was releasing her from a hurting body, and yet even then felt as though I was betraying her, not like with Kye, whom it hurt so much to lose, yet we had had the grace of so many many good years together.

The images and horror from the day we lost you have yet to dim, and still haunt me. I know you were such a sweet tempered, forgiving little thing, you wouldn't wish that. But they still persist. I'm still in shock-still can't believe that I will never see your beautiful, glossy, particoloured figure that almost never quit moving, that I can't call your name and have you come racing up from playing with Copper in the pasture, to the step and sit wiggling, waiting to be let in.

I hope there is a doggy heaven, and you are there right now, getting all the dogs wound up in a grand old game of chase, with lots of good things for you to scent out and gobble up, and warm beds with lots of pillows for you to lay on and stretch out and sigh.

Rest in peace, sweet girl, our Jewel.