Oakie joined our family in June of 2001. She was a 13 year old sweetheart that had ended up in rescue when her original owners were unable to keep her. She had some health problems when she came to us, so between her age and the health issues we knew her time with us was going to be limited. What was originally thought might be only a few weeks, due to her health problems turned into 7 months. During that time she endeared herself to our family and became just as much a part of it as any of our other dogs.

She was terribly afraid of thunder storms and loved to steal bread off of the kitchen counters, but she was true gold, despite the silver threads and silly quirks. She quickly settled in with our other dogs and became a favorite playmate for 4 year old Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved to play with her and take her for walks. That's Elizabeth pictured with her above.

Oakie's health began to fail shortly before Christmas and she became very unsteady on her legs. She began to have problems getting up and down and control her bowel functions. On our last trip to the vet to see if there was any way we could help her maintain her quality of life the vet gave us the sad news. Based on his exam he felt that it would not be long no matter what we did, and letting her go would be the best thing we could do for her. So we chose to let her go without suffering. We were there with her at the end, and through our tears we hope she knew how hard it was for us, and that she was loved and will be missed by all of us.