For Ruckus, our tough girl, she tried so hard to beat the odds just one more time.  You see we got her as a 3 legged dog, the 4^th leg had an old injury that was never set and she was not able to extend it enough to even use it to balance.  With just the tiniest bit of help and a little luck, first she started walking on all 4 again, eventually running and swimming with the best of them.

We were so happy for her and she sure had a blast.

She taught us perseverance, determination, to never qive up and most of all not to forget to have fun.  We loved her a lot.

We need another and wiser and perhaps mystical concept of animals.  We patronize them for

their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves.  And

therein we err, and greatly err.  For the animal shall not be measured by man.  In a world

older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of

the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.  They are not

brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net

of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and the travail ahead.

By Henry Beston