and I got a 91 on my test.

I should do so badly more often :-p

My Dog is dying.

He's the most amazing dog ever. We've had him almost half of my life. He was the promised dog, I know it sounds corny to pull on important biblical ideas like the promised land to describe a dog, but it's true, and I don't know how else to explain.

We had a Dog when we live in Indianapolis and I was little, her name was Sandy. She thought Phillip and Kristi and I were her puppies, and we love her. She loved us, and got angry whenever Mom and Dad would take us away from the house so she would defecate in spite of them, and we had to get rid of her.

It was awful.

Then we moved to Ann Arbor, MI. It was sometimes nice there, but other than some grnd exceptions I hated it there. We rented a house and couldn't have a dog, and that's when we were promised a dog, as soon as we had a house of our own.

Three and a half years later we moved to Elizabethtown, KY. It was an amazing place, and it's where we bought Java.

I still remember going to the breaders and seeing him, and picking him out of the whole bunch. He was the best. The most beautiful, the sweetest, the best. We had to wait till we took him home and I stlll remember all the impatience welling up in me and wanting to find someway to sneak him home right then. After just a few weeks, was not so long compared to the years we had waited, we finally had our very own puppy, Java the German Shepherd.

And not just any old German Shepherd, he was pure bread, his parents were actually from Germany (there's an American type of German Shepherd to which is what Silver is).

We found out, I believe, the same day we brought him home that he had a heart problem. A valve that by passes blood past the lungs while he was in the womb hadn't closed, so his lungs didn't have enough oxygen unless his heart worked very hard. This meant that his poor overworked heart would fail before he was a year old. We already knew he was amazing, and we'd waited for so long, and we did what any self-respecting deep-hearted, and slightly ridiculous family who has puppy love would do: we bought him heart surgery, and he was saved.

I could write all kinds of stories, but I haven't the time because Homework still calls.

I do have to say though that Java has been a constant in change, that has caused him to be all the more cherished. We endured a heart-wrenching move from Elizabethtown to Bay City, MI together, a move that most have been hard on him as well as us. He had to leave his huge side yard full of fruit trees, the enormous back yard where he could chase deer and root out moles, the garden that he could sneak into to eat out home grown vegtables, the front yard with it's enormous hill where he would roll pears (from the tree) down, so he could chase them, and then eventually lay down on that hill to survey his kingdom. There were also the woods to roam in, which Kristi and I would take him exploring in on warm summer days. And of course the pool, which he was probably not so sad to be rid of after his nearly deadly fall in one fall day after it had been closed up for the winter.

All this was traded for a tiny postage stamp yard on a dingy street surrounded by houses. It was hard for me too, and I remember telling Java all my secrets, and being glad that I had a friend who would cuddle up next to me and never chastise me and always love me.

He also came to Lima, Ohio with us. He's there now. And I'm so far away. He's dying. Something is wrong with his legs, he can't use them like he used too. They fall out from under him. Now he can't walk up stairs and he can't keep himself clean when he goes to the bathroom.

Mom and Dad just called to say that it's time to put him down.

And all my only response is to cry.

I know it's silly.

I know he's only a dog...

but is he really? It seems wrong to classify him away because he's furry and has four paws, and the biggest, brownest most sympathetic eyes.

He's a friend, and I love him.

And it's hurts like the worst things I can think of to know that we're going to kill him, no matter how humane it is.


I wish that he could live forever, or that I could at least have the same hope I do about Christian friends and family that I'll see him again- but there's no such joy in this death.

Only the knowledge that a friend will be gone forever.

And I can't stop crying.

Jessica