My dear old friend

I was going to write a huge list of memories of our little dog, Max, who died peacefully today after a long and fruitful life, and I'm sorry to say, a sadly painful past few months. The list will have to wait; it is too hard to write right now.

Anyway, it got to be impossible to square the profoundly arthritic and out-of-it little guy with the vibrant hunter of rabbits and grasshoppers and nefarious food thief he'd been for so many years.

He wasn't always a well-behaved dog, but he was a very good dog.

I only wish I also had photographic evidence from one of the *two* Christmases he helped himself to the Swedish meatballs while standing on the dinner table. ... Or the induced vomiting after the pig-out on chocolates; or video from the two (or was it three?) days of amped-up Max after he broke into the bag of coffee beans; or the hopping behind me in my snowshoe tracks when he was tired out after a run along the Lamprey River in winter, or...