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| We remember. . . Rainmakers Joke's On Us, "Joker". 12/29/01 - 9/11/09 You came to us as a replacement for your half-sister’s bad hips. We weren’t going to keep you, didn’t have room for another dog, but we did, from that first retrieve down the driveway at 7 weeks, you were home. So we named you Joker because the joke was on us. Except you were a very serious dog and, as if to make up for your sister’s incorrigible ways and bad health, you were always a good dog right from the start. You were as much guardian as retriever and though you loved to train, showed tremendous promise, you were a home girl at heart. You were not happy leaving things untended for long and so you stayed behind on weekends, content with being just a dog who loved to retrieve and swim and keep the other dogs in line. You were the one dog that wouldn’t get on the furniture, always placing yourself in the doorway of whatever room I was in, inspecting every blade of grass and leaf being raked from the yard to make sure everything was as it should be. You never left the property but for the day you heard a crew clearing a fallen tree down on the road and I found you sitting and watching every move they made. You never won any ribbons but you gave some wonderful lives to more than a few families across the country. Your time ended far too soon as cancer appeared so suddenly 11 months ago. You handled the chemo as everything else, with quiet good sense and steady tail but it was awful for us to know what was happening, to watch the slow devastation. We brought birds home for your last hunt, took you for your last swim and an ice cream cone, but none of that was enough, there should have been so much more for you, such a good, good girl. Laid to rest overlooking her beloved home, may she continue to watch over her daughter in the field below. |
