Berkeley "Pizza"

These last few days have been SO tough.  Last Friday should've been a really happy day... Eric and I celebrated our 10th anniversary and my parents and grandfather were in town to visit.  But unfortunately we weren't smiling much because we were struggling to accept that it was our dog Berkeley's last night with us.

Berkeley was a Rhodesian Ridgeback, the most beautiful breed of dog in the world (in our humble opinion)... so rare and so special.  When we bought our first house in Maryland, we decided to get a puppy right away.  We had our sights set on a Ridgeback but it wasn't so easy to find one in our area.  We ended up "ordering" a new puppy from a breeder in Palestine, Texas.  Here was the first picture we ever saw of him:

 I'll never forget the day I picked him up from the airport (Eric was out of town for work) and brought him home.  I'd never really had a puppy before and I was in for a rude awakening!  But he was so sweet, and cute, and of course Eric fell in love with him as soon as he came home!  We decided to name him "Berkeley" after Berkeley Place apartments, one of the places we lived while at Clemson.  We had so many great memories there, and we made lots of fun memories with Berkeley as well.

Berk was our "baby" and our "little princess" for a few years... before the kids came along!  Then he was our constant companion, snuggle buddy, and climbing toy for the kids.  Sometime last year Chase and Siena decided that Berkeley needed a middle name like the rest of us and they settled on Berkeley "Pizza!" 

He really was the perfect dog: he didn't bark, he was gentle and friendly, and super smart.  Maybe too smart!  He loved to try to get any table scraps he could manage, and he definitely enjoyed cleaning off the babies' highchairs and licking their sticky fingers!  Probably his only fault was that he was so tall that he could easily take food off our plates, and it would drive the kids (and me) crazy when we walked away from the table for a second... only to return and find our meal gone!  One time he ate an entire skillet full of shrimp and grits that I had just prepared!!

But we loved him dearly.  I really can't believe that he's gone.  He was only 8 years old, and I don't think we were in any way prepared to have him leave us soon.  We recently found out that he had bone cancer in one of his back legs and was in a lot of pain, and then last Friday he slipped and fell (while trying to clean off the twins' highchairs of course!) and injured one of his front legs, so he could no longer stand.  It was one of the hardest things we've ever had to do, saying goodbye to him.  While we know it was for the best, we still don't like it.  We will miss him every day!!!