Sadly our wonderful weekend was marred by the death of our wonderful collie, Madison. We came home to find she'd gone to sleep and just not woken up. I was upstairs and Roy went to let the dogs in from the kennel. (They have a big kennel with access to our basement, so nice and warm and dry and lots of room to play.) Dash and Murphy came up, but Maddie didn't. I heard sobbing coming from downstairs and ran outside to find him stumbling up the stairs crying.

She was such a beautiful, sweet, gentle girl. She'd look at you with these gorgeous chocolate eyes as if you were the most wonderful person in the entire world...and then she'd burp. The entire house was always covered with "tumble fur" from her blowing coat CONSTANTLY. She loved to play...for awhile, and then she got cranky and would go all "Cujo on your ass" at Dash. Poor Dude, he never quite got that when she was done playing, she was DONE.

Last weekend we took them all to the dog park, which is her MOST favorite place EVER. If you even mentioned "Dog Park" or even "Swog Mark" or "Log Snark" she would go INSANE! Because her hips were starting to bother her, we kept her on leash until we got out to the lake. On the lake she assumed her role of herding the rest of the dogs to try to control chaos. She'd run up and down the beach trying to get the dogs in the water out of the water, snapping at the dogs running around to "behave" and "stop running! It's dangerous!" and just having a HELL of a time. I'm so thankful we took them. Who knew it would be her last trip to the park?

Friday Roy and I were in the "used food store" and I saw a toy that I knew she'd love, so I told him "Maddie told me to get this for her." We brought it home and I enjoyed watching her and Dash play with it that night, until Dash performed a Squeak-ectomy on the poor thing. Even after that, she ran around with it's "shell" in her mouth, shaking it and trying to get Dash to tug on it for a good game of tug of war. Last night we buried her with that toy (or what was left of it), and planted a hydrangea over the top. The dogs got me the hydrangea for mother's day, so I thought it was fitting. (On a rather crass note, do you have any idea what a challenge it is to get a 90 pound collie up the stairs and then dig a grave deep enough to bury her in in the dark? Yeah. I'm sure the neighbors are STILL talking.)

Here is my beautiful girl. She's the one second from the front. The merle 'Sandy' colored collie at the Dog Park last week. (In fact, her first "acting" role was as Sandy in Roy's first play, "Annie." She found two other collies and fell in with them like, "Hey! Kin!"