QUEEN MADISON2/14/2005-1/20/2018

The proposed "relaxing, 45 minute drive to the country" to meet you, was actually 3 hellish hours of white-knuckle, bumper-to-bumper traffic, from Falls Church to Catlett, VA, on a treacherous, never ending two lane highway.

I was the one who proposed getting a dog, and I had my heart set on a Beagle. You looked Beagle-ish in your online photo - a puppy with the tortured expression of a world weary old woman (your 'Sophie's Choice' face, I called it).

When Carla, the owner of

Country Club Kennels and Training

, brought you out to meet us, it seemed the last thing of interest to you were the two middle aged gay men, with excited expressions, trying to get your attention. But it was hopeless. There were too many other things to smell.

"I don't think she's the one" I said, disappointed. "I want a dog who worships me, and she doesn't even know that we're here".

Tony, eager to bring the (now) month long dog hunt to a close, pushed back "c'mon. Let's take her for a couple of weeks, and if you still don't like her, we'll bring her back" (as if I would ever make that drive a second time).

For the very first time, I sat in the passenger seat of the car, and Tony drove. You sat in my lap. The drive back home wasn't nearly as stressfull. By the end of that 90 minute car ride, you were my dog.

After a year of 24/7 companionship, we were apart for the very first time, when I spent several weeks in Florida, helping my mother through knee replacement surgery.

I thought about you constantly, and obsessively played the tape of our coming reunion, in my mind.

When I was finally in the parking lot, I called Tony and said "make sure the door is unlocked. I want to burst in and surprise her". Nothing I'd imagined could measure up to the homecoming you gave me -- your tail wagging so hard, that you looked frightened the rear half of your body had taken on a life of its own, as you screamed a howl of unbridled joy, and unspeakable torment all at once.

We would have several more of those reunions through the years, and I'm so sorry for any moment I caused you to think that I wasn't coming back to you. You never left my thoughts and you never will.

When you came into our lives, we were planning on buying a house in Virginia. At the mere hint of settling down, I was adamant that I had to have a dog. I'd waited the whole of my life to have one and I wasn't taking NO for an answer.

Perhaps it's best that I couldn't know that, together, you and I would move close to 30 times, to 7 different cities, in three different countries. 'Dogs need routine and stability' they said. But wherever we went, you seemed happy and content, just so long as we were together. You took it all in stride, found your new spot of sunlight, and stared out of your new window.

Over our many years together, spontaneously and independent of one another, friends would call you Queen Madison, because it was clear, to all who looked at us, that you held the center of my focus and were the center of my world.

Today, that world, along with my heart, are completely shattered.

I don't know what I'll do at the grocery store now, if I don't have the cart filled with treats for you, and just coffee for me.

In fact, I don't know what I'm going to do without you, at all. Because you weren't just the dog of my life. You weren't even just the love of my life. You were my life. And I don't know who, or even how, I'm going to be in this world without you.

And none of these shitty, pointless words I've written here, can ever express the depth of love ...and now loss, that I feel for you. They're just a way for me to avoid saying the one word I've been terrified to say to you for the last 12 years ...goodbye.

I don't know that I will ever be able to say that word to you my sweet sweet girl.

So for now, I'll just say these two words to you, and hope you know that I mean them from the depths of my soul ...thank you. thank you. thank you.