Drake

We have been missing Drake lately.  Brady brings him up once in awhile and has been saying that we need a new dog.  I had a dream about Drake the other week and it took a few days of sadness and constant thoughts of him to get through it.  It led me to go through his file folders.  I had been saving almost all of his receipts since we purchased him and always joked about figuring out the total cost of having a dog - a dog like Drake.  :)  And the final total is..........  $26,200.  Honestly, it's a lot of money but Chris and I thought it would have been more than that!  It was weird to read through everything again - all his allergy shot info, his purchase info, his breeding history, the fact that we bought him on October 17th and he died on October 12th twelve years later - almost the same date...

About a month ago when it was nice out, we were all outside on a Sunday.  As we were talking to some neighbors, Brady wandered off down the sidewalk.  I eventually followed him and he ended up sitting on the grass by the stop sign.  As I stood there with him while he sat, a neighbor pulled up.  She was laughing and said that while she was headed the other direction, she had to come our way because seeing Brady sit there (not on our lawn) reminded her of Drake.  He would always just "crash" when we were almost home from our walk.  Sometimes just a lawn away from ours.  And he wouldn't budge.  Some neighbors thought it was funny and her associating the two situations made me really laugh at the funny memory of Drake that I had seemed to have forgotten.  That's the sucky thing about a loss - before you even realize it, you tend to start forgetting things.  Things you don't want to forget.  It's so hard.