A Tribute to Tom

In July of 2005, Matt surprised me with a Golden Retriever puppy whom we named Lola. By the next summer, we decided that Lola needed a friend.  This time, we decided to adopt a dog from the Golden Retriever Rescue.  They thought they had a dog that matched our wish list, and a volunteer from the organization scheduled a "trial visit" one weekend.  When she first arrived with Tom, he was a bit skittish.  However, once we let him into the backyard with Lola, they quickly started playing ball together.  In fact, Tom was the first dog that Lola had ever played with who could get to the tennis ball faster...and, surprisingly, she didn't seem to mind.  We kept him for the weekend and fell in love with him.  He was about 10 months old at the time, and he was nearly full grown and close to 70 pounds.  Yet, he seemed to think of himself as more of a lap dog and always wanted to snuggle up with someone.  He was also accustomed to sleeping in the bed, right up by someone's head...and that is how he slept for quite a while.  We finally trained him to sleep down between our legs rather than halfway on top of our heads.

By the next year, we were ready to expand our family again, this time with a baby.  Once we brought Griffin home, Tom quickly learned that he had lost his spot in the bed and had moved down a notch on the family totem pole.  However, he didn't seem to mind and turned out to be a great "big brother." As Griffin became more mobile and more interactive with his environment, Tom regularly got stepped on or crawled over.  He had his fur pulled, eyes poked, and everything else you can imagine. However, he never snapped or growled at Griffin--he was just happy to be getting some sort of attention.  A few years later when two more little people came along, he continued to be just as tolerant.

In February, while we were out of school for winter weather, Tom became very sick.  He wasn't eating and wasn't responding to any of the medications.  On February 27, we sadly had to say goodbye to our dear friend.

I began this post several months ago, but didn't publish it right away because I wanted to find more pictures to add.  However, I haven't blogged at all since that time so I am just now revisiting this post. Even though more than 5 months have passed since we lost our four-legged friend, the boys still talk about Tom regularly and remember how much he loved to play with them.  He is definitely still missed by us all.