Silver

Today we said good-bye to Silver. She is my father-in-law's dog, who at times lived with us. My FIL lives next door, and Silver grew up at his house. Her best friend, Brahma, was my husband's dog, and when we built our house and moved in with Brahma, Silver came too. When Brahma died, she spent her time between our house and my FIL's. These past few years, as she got older, she rarely came over, spending most of her days in front of the fire at FIL's house. We considered her our "1/2" dog, as in "we have 2-1/2 dogs". I guess part-time would've been a better term.

Silver was rescued from the pound as a 6-month old pup, who caught S and his father's attention by "waggin' and peein', waggin' and peein'." Even as an adult, she'd pee at the slightest provocation, being insecure and at times nervous. As for the waggin' - well that continued in full force. She was able to knock just about anything off of a coffee table. You just had to look at her, heck just think about her and she'd start waggin'. That's when it was clear to me (it always takes me longer than everyone else to come to these conclusions) that her time was here. She stopped waggin'. That was the saddest thing to see. Her still tail.

Silver was a country dog, a woodland dog. She and Brahma would head out at 4 AM, and come back wet and exhausted around 8 AM. Timber bashing. Disturbing the wildlife. Livin' it up. Sometimes they'd be gone for days. Once, S and his dad were away for the weekend, Silver and Brahma got into the chicken coop (raising meat chickens that year) and killed all 80 chickens. Just left them there to rot. Didn't even eat them. (Yes, anyone reading this who lives in the country will ask, "how did she make it to 15?") The funny thing about her wild youth is that to know her when she was older (started settling down when she was about 4), is that she was the sweetest, loviest, waggin'est dog around. She especially liked it when I put on the Andrews Sisters singing "Silver Bells" for Christmas. Her other nickname was "Brown Eyes" for those big brown eyes (we debated putting up "Beware of Brown Eyes" instead of "Beware of Dog" at the end of the driveway, but didn't think it'd have the same effect), which became "Brownie", which of course inspired us to tell her "heck of a job, Brownie." Only she actually deserved it - no one could wag as much as Brownie.