The Hardest Goodbye

The only flowers this blog entry contain are the ones that were laid on my sweet pup's grave this week. The Catalog is coming, I expect it to be out in the next week or so so stay tuned. This is a Eulogy. 

The Keta Years, 2009-2019.

I’ve come to realize that life is pretty much just a repeating series of loving something until it’s gone from your life forever. I got to love  this little leaky, stinky black lab for a good run and  take some solace in the fact that she had one hell of an adventurous life. Not all that many dogs have been 5 miles off the Pacific Ocean in a dory boat, 8,000’ up in the cascades to chase cross country skiers, run the Deschutes river from Mack’s Canyon to the mouth 4 Times, or drifted and motored over 200 miles on the John Day River, swam in the Rivers of olympic national park and navigated the Santiam and willamette in a Jet sled. She was lucky to live an unchained life in a nursery filled with flowers and she always knew when the sugar snap peas and raspberries were ready for harvest as I’d catch her grazing around the farm. She was a present under the Christmas tree to my then 6 year old daughter who has now grown into a woman. She spent some of her later years trying to catch camas pocket gophers in the Cherry Orchard, a feat that she was never really successful at, but I always appreciated her effort and when the cat would actually get one, it was Keta who would steal it and bring it to me. She had a way of getting on people’s nerves, especially on a beach filled with sticks as I don’t think anything in life brought her more joy then a well flung stick and a long swim to retrieve it and she would force you to throw the stick. But mostly she was always there for me, tail wagging at the end of a long day, ready to jump in the bed of the pickup for a trip to the swimming hole or just lay in the shade on the patio while I strummed a guitar. I’m so thankful for that one last run down the John Day with her in Project Mayhem, and I could tell the end was coming soon when she couldn’t jump up on the cooler or fly over the gunwale like I’d seen her do million times before. I guess I thought she was gonna stay that perpetual puppy she was at heart forever and I didn’t realize 10 years had gone by in the blink of an eye. And while life may be just that endless repeating cycle of loving something until it’s gone, I think it’s dogs that teach us what loving really means. Love is unconditional and endless for a dog and while she may have been small for a lab, her heart was definitely two sizes too big. Love you Keta, aka stanky, aka little bits, aka bitty dog. Thanks for all the adventures and memories, say hello to Skip, Scooter and Lola for me.  

Goodbye Little Bits you were such a good friend.