And Baby Makes 3: Bye Bye Old Friend

Today we said goodbye to our companion of 12 years Durham the dog. He has been with us through just about every milestone in our lives. Marriage, 3 kids, 3 cross country moves and buying our first house.

We adopted Durham from a shelter in Broward County, FL. The lady at the shelter saw a sucker coming a mile away. She put this little black puppy with a purple tongue and huge paws in my arms and I was in love. I called Jim and told him I had found a Durham for Raleigh.

first day with our new puppy

It wasn't all perfect, our puppy liked to chew records and books. He had a love of Mexican heather plants and almost made a return visit to the shelter when he ate the ribbons for my work uniform off of the coffee table but left Jim's (which were right next to mine) untouched. As puppy he had a weakened immune system and battled with mange for the first year of his life. He also had a sensitive system and left us many presents on our rugs over the years which to led to the purchase of his very own spot bot!

Some fun things I would like to remember. Durham gave the best greetings. Anyone that he liked got a special whine and for those he really liked he talked to them and his entire butt would wag. Durham was not a fan of mailmen or people in uniform. He took it personally when people tried to put mail in the mail slot and would try to wrestle it out of their hands. In his younger years we could get Durham so excited that our living room would turn into a race track. He would run the circuit and cruise his paws along the back of the couch. He loved to wrestle and play tug of war. One of his favorite companions for this was Angus the cat. It was quite a sight to watch a cat and dog play and wrestle with each other.

Durham had a thing for diaper butts. He would go up to them and nose them, usually to the babies dismay. Once he went up to a little boy in the park and started nosing his backpack trying to get him to play. That poor kid looked terrified and Dur just couldn't understand what the problem was!

Our Dur, Durpuppy, Bear cub, Furball, old man will truly be missed.