So long, old girl

Never has there been a more endearing and annoying dog, we always said. She loved to get into the garbage and if I left butter out to soften she would eat it EVERY TIME. Once we came home from church to find she'd gotten into the closet and chewed up one shoe out of every pair I owned. I was stuck wearing my church shoes for weeks.

We also said she was the dog with nine lives. Connie inexplicably broke her leg when she was a puppy and we thought we'd have to put her down since we didn't have the thousands of dollars needed for surgery. The vet hesitatingly put a cast on it, and it worked, but she limped the rest of her long life. And once she ate glue, and once she lost a ton of weight and we thought it was the end. She always bounced back, but it turned out she was on her last life this year.

Yes, she was exceedingly annoying, but boy was she there to see us through a lot of stuff. We got her when we'd been married less than a year. I first held her at my friend Rose's wedding (they were her father-in-law's puppies) and we later brought her home to my parents' because she was supposed to be my dad's hunting dog. We bought our first house a couple of months later and she came to live with us. We nicknamed her "Cowdog." She was allowed on the furniture! Over the years, she was there when we went to live at camp for the summer, brought home five babies, moved, changed jobs, and mourned our various losses.

So in honor of Connie's nine lives, here are nine fond memories.

1. This was one of the first weekends after we brought her home. We went up to camp at Tahquamenon Falls for the weekend and it was there I learned how crazy people are about dogs. I never got that much attention dogless, that's for sure.

2. For a short time she rode in a kennel in the car, but she got carsick, so after about two minutes she had free reign. Which she held for the rest of her life.

3. Connie with her cast. I remember when Kevin called me to tell me what had happened. I was at school. I had to leave the classroom crying, and my teacher-friend Jessica came and hugged me while I wondered aloud why I'd cry over a dog I hated so much.

4. She used to sleep on the couch or in our bed. By the time the kids came she was banished to a kennel in the basement! Sorry dog, that's how it goes.

5. Nellie's first afternoon at home. My favorite (picture, not child. I love you all the same!)

6. The time the girls painted the dogs.

7. Connie loved paddle boarding in her older age.

8. A dog on the boat!? I'd forgotten about this. During one of her bad spells we thought sure she was dying. We brought her to Pam's "one last time," which is why I felt sorry for her and let her ride on my lap. What an actress she was. She lived over two more years.

9. Actually one of her last times at the lake. Just right.