All Dogs Go to Heaven

Shanon's cousin, Rick, says "If dogs don't go to heaven, then I don't want to go." Well, Phoebe is there now, with Thunder. She was 15 years old.

Phoebe is a legend in our families. She was named after Shanon's childhood dog. His family has always been dog lovers and actually raised Boston Terriers for a while. But, in my family, dogs stayed outside and were basically ignored. I never even wanted a dog. But, there are some things you do when you get married . . . We bought our first house in 1991, and Shanon insisted he was going to buy me a dog for my birthday. We decided to crate train Phoebe. So, we put her in a crate on a table next to our bed every night. She never whined at night, and she was easy to house train. From the beginning, it was like Phoebe spoke our language. You could tell her to do something and she did it. Once she was house trained, she moved into our bed, and the rest is a loving, cuddly history. (Well, cuddly on her terms.) It was not unusual for us to wake up in the morning to find Phoebe between us, with her head on the pillow, on her back with her paws resting on the covers. She was one of us. My friend Sonya said that Phoebe's name was on the deed to our house.

The slide show has a few shots of Phoebe during her life: Her "cherry eye" that corrected itself; her teething on Shanon's glove; her carnival bear that I trained her how to get a bad guy (she would go straight for the groin!); her humiliation when we made her and Thunder pose for Christmas cards; Phoebe protecting one of my parent's foster babies -- she was very protective of them, but couldn't have cared less about Talon; Kaylea (my niece) getting one of Phoebe's many kisses; and, our favorite shot of Phoebe and Thunder is below, along with a recent photo of Phoebe and Penny napping in the sun. (If you are reading this from an e-mail, you will hav to go to the website to view the slide show.)