Pockets was fifteen years old in September 2005

and had been having heart trouble. On October 28th, when I went out to feed the dogs,I found her in her last sleep in the yard. She had a good life.

Here's Pockets' clone (not really)- We call her Deuce. She's a five pound mixed breed terrier recently rescued. She was very timid when we got her in the winter of 08, but has taken over the house now.

Here's Dudley, a great Pyrenees who weighed about 80 lbs in this picture, but at his death, at eight years old, weighed about 160. He could lay his head flat on the kitchen counter top, though I discouraged this. Standing on his hind legs, he could put his front feet at the top of the fridge, but we didn't tell him.

In KC, Dudley and Pockets and Harry's dog Blondie - three blond hairballs, and all have died now - wrestled all day with Pockets chasing the big dogs as if she were a mongoose and they were snakes. They both backed up from her fierce 9 1/2 lbs.

Here's a shot I took at the groomer's just to prove that sometimes Dudley was clean. In Idaho, his yard was all grass and he stayed clean for several days, sometimes.

My granddaughter, Lorisa, used to drive longhaul for Swift

so her escape-artist love-addicted spoiled rotten Akita

came to live with me and hung out with Dudley and Deuce.

Here are Dudley and Kita on their pillows

Captain Pepper Jack, who visited us for a while, was shot for digging holes in someone else's yard. I didn't do it. I would never have done it. Jack was a wonderful (though pretty much untrainable) dog.

Dudley in the yard in the snow in the winter of 2006

I leave you here with Pockets thinking about how she came to leave her home in Boise, Idaho, where she was her owner's owner, and for her first ten years had never slept on the floor, to Kansas City, MO, where she learned how to be a real dog among dogs, living, and dying, outside.