The impending snowstorm landed as we slept and we woke up to however many inches of snow we were promised. It delivered. This new snow that blanketed our yard will not bear Denver’s tracks. The thought occurred to me yesterday so I walked around the yard looking for his paw prints in the snow. It had snowed days before then melted then snowed again making clear impressions difficult to find. But I knew he had walked around the yard one last time before our ride to the vet so there must be one and I found it.
I don’t know how a decade goes by so quickly. I still remember my friend’s words as if she had uttered them yesterday when I told her the many reasons that I preferred fostering dogs for others to adopt over adopting one myself. I had even less financial stability back then. I didn’t have the time. And lastly, I told her that I was afraid to be stuck with a dog for 10 years or more. She said to me, “Dogs always leave us before we are ready.”
Paw
Last car ride
Denver came into my life in the heat of the summer. He left us in the dead of the winter. The asymmetry of his timeline didn’t make it easier to say goodbye.
He was always an easy dog, not fussy and stoic to the end. It was as if he knew he was once abandoned in a shelter and was trying to prove his worth by being good.
Our love for Denver is and was uncomplicated. He taught me many things, among them, the importance of remaining persistently hopeful and believing in our capacity for love. In a time with so much manmade chaos and suffering in the world and with my very human limitation for both, I will try to remember the wisdom he imparted. So long, my friend, my shadow, my black sunshine.
Never too old to make a new friend
Chilling on the carpet
Denver on his cross country trip.
Denver on one of his hikes
Happy with a stick
Denver photographed by the shelter when he was first surrendered in Kentucky