Goodbye Jessie

Jessie, our sweet, smart little black dog, died unexpectedly last night. We've no idea what happened; it appears that she just laid down on the grass and went to sleep. Joel and Richard found her when they got home from baseball last night. We're all heartbroken.

This picture is a good one. Jessie was a one-ear-up-one-ear-down kind of dog. When the kids were littler we used to call her our circus dog, since she was so smart and sociable and funny and brave. She's the one who was torn up so badly by our neighbor's two vicious German Shepherds several years ago. She had four Penrose drains stitched into her for six weeks--lots of stitches for an eleven pound dog! But she survived and continued to charm everyone she met until the very end.

I know there are worse ways to go than to curl up on the lawn in front of the home you love and go to sleep forever, but we will certainly miss her.