Darby Is Gone.

Sweet Darby died this morning. He died alone...on his bed in the kitchen. I wish we would have been with him. I pray he did not suffer. I cannot even begin to express the grief we are feeling. He has been with us for 8 years and our hearts are breaking. Darby is an angel now. I will never forget him...or the first day I saw him jumping up on that fence wagging his little tail at me and barking. Darby I love you.....

Things I don't want to forget about Darby:

*How he wiggled all over when he saw children.

*That his name was Alex when we rescued him...but we changed it to Darby because I always wanted to name a daughter Alexandra and call her Alex.

*How he used his paw to scrape at the door when he had to go out.

*How he barked nd barked and barked...all of the time...just for the fun of it.

*How he loved his dog chews.

*How he wouldn't eat much for days after his best friend Damien died.

*How he would bark as we got close to our new home when we went to visit it during its construction.

*How smart he was and how proud he was when he was competing in obedience at a dog show.

*His big beautiful brown eyes looking up at me.

*How he would let Jack take food right out of his mouth.

*The way that he would hump up his back when you scratched him near his tail.

*How he loved to sleep on the bed with us until he got too bad to go upstairs.

*How he LOVED to go "bye bye"...anywhere in the car...and how he would bark and squeal with excitement whenever we took him somewhere.

*How he would race around the park in Hilliard with his choppy little gait (before we knew he had wobblers) running after his best friend Damien.

*How he would start barking as soon as he heard the toaster click down or smelled my toast cooking. (I always shared my toast with him in the mornings after he became paralyzed.)

*How he LOVED his Dad.

*How much he hated the "white dog" and Alaskan Malamutes.

*How he screamed in pain during his first episode of wobblers.

*How he loved everyone...and was always happy no matter what people did to him or regardless of what life dealt him...he was always happy with life.

*How very much I loved him.

Oh....I don't know what we are going to do without him.