Thanks, Spaw, That was a good one. It's getting a litle better for me, I've actually had thoughts of going to the shelter and filling out the paperwork. I'm by no means ready to get another one just yet, but it would be nice to have all the paperwork filled out. Jason's still having a very hard time.

One of the hardest things is the routine is missing. For 15 years, the first thing I did when I got up in the morning was take the dog out. I'd wake up and he'd be looking at me with those big brown eyes of his, the expression in them usually some variation of "well it's about time you woke up!"

He was a great trail dog, we hiked a lot of mountains in Maine and New Hampshire together. The time we hiked Mt. Washington, we'd gotten above tree line and Clancy stepped off the trail for a sniff. We'd gone past him when he got back on the trail and he got confused and went down the trail instead of up. There were a few minutes of panic on my part, then my uncle yelled down the trail "hey! Anyone seen a yellow dog with a red backpack? Answers to Clancy." People passed the message down the trail until someone saw him (he'd backtracked almost a mile), and then there was a chain of people calling "Clancy!" all the way back to us. As he'd run by people, they'd all clap. He stuck pretty close for the rest of that hike.