The end of 2017 was a bit of a sad one. The last of the line of family dogs we had had over the past twenty years, got ill and decided it was time for her to leave us. She was a beautiful, wonderful Golden Retriever-Lab mix, 13 years old, and had lived a good long life with us. Jazzy was not a naughty dog. The only thing she ever did was “retrieve” our shoes or socks and deposit them where it took a bit of searching to find. As an older puppy, she’d gotten hold of not one pair of my prescription glasses, but two, wrecking them beyond repair. The second pair was the replacement for the first she’d crumpled. I spent over $1000 replacing pairs of glasses. As an adult, one couldn’t find a sweeter family dog.

At the time we had multiple dogs, but Jasmine was my daughter’s “puppy,” getting her when my daughter was 7 years old. Her name, Jasmine, was my idea, since my daughter was in a phase where she named everything she got Princess or Angel. Puppy and child grew up together. My daughter said that even though Jazzy was hers, all her friends felt like Jazzy was their dog, too.

It was New Years Eve day when my daughter and I made the heartrending pronouncement that it was time. It was a tough decision, but the vet said that it was all right to let her go with a bit of dignity. Thank God, my daughter had been home from college for the holidays, and thank God, she’d had a few weeks to grieve before heading back for spring semester.