trying

I don't know how else to say it but we're trying. We are really sad. We've started remembering a lot of wonderful moments. Still, it seems like we're having a hard time moving to that next stage of grieving. We're just sad and really longing to have her around again.

So let me tell you the story of Madison. Lisa and I were juniors at A&M. Lisa was suffering from separation anxiety from her childhood pet, Crystal...an American Eskimo. She had always wanted a Siberian Husky so right around Lisa's birthday in 1997, we saw an advertisement in the school newspaper for puppy Siberian Huskies. We thought...let's just go look. Our fate was sealed right then.

We drove up to Franklin, Texas where the local Baptist minister breded Siberian Huskies. We went out back to take a look at the litter and Madison stood out. Her mom was gorgeous...slim, red and white. Her dad was a massive black and white mischievous big boy. The owner said that he had to extend this fence to 6 feet because he kept finding ways to climb over. No doubt, Madison took after her daddy.

What we remember was that we picked Madison out very quickly...she was the only black and white female and was very curious abut us. Unfortunately, she had been promised to someone else. We decided that we didn't want any other dog and that if the other owners fell through, then we would take her and we would know it was meant to be. Sure enough, we received a call later that the other people backed out and that Madison was ours.

So this was in April of 1997 so Madison was born in mid February. We picked her up around the first of May and brought her back to Lisa's one bedroom apartment in College Station. Although Lisa and I were high school sweet-hearts and our lives together was certain, our parents warned us that getting a dog so early would be difficult. We still had a lot of school left and travelling would become a little more complicated. We stubbornly had already made up our mind and went for it.

We brought her to Lisa's little apartment and the fun began. Madison was a little terror. She was SO stubborn. The first week she brought Lisa to tears. We were recalling today that when Lisa was breaking down that first week and we were having doubts about taking on a puppy, Lisa said something to the affect..."how am I ever going to be able to have kids if I can't even handle a puppy?"

Funny now. Here are the first pictures of our new member of our young family.





This was the morning we left to drive home for the summer. It was our first road trip together and we tackled it with a 3 month old puppy. What was very memorable about the trip was Madison stayed on the floorboard under Lisa's feet the entire trip. We've always remembered that since she grew up so fast that summer that it was always hard to believe she was ever small enough to sleep under Lisa's feet that whole trip back to Ohio. This first picture was taken at 5am ish right as we were embarking on our journey. These pictures (and they'll be more tomorrow) are from Lisa's mom's house in Ohio. She spent that first summer with Lisa in OH while I went to my home in DC. She grew up SO fast that summer.