G’s daycare asked for donations of old pet toys, props etc for an upcoming unit on pets and animals. We’d had Tsaina’s leash and collar sitting around for…about 8 yrs now since we had to put T down. Its too bulky to enjoy using, and it didn’t really seem right to Kila anyway, and I didn’t have the heart to give it away or throw it out. This seemed a great solution.

Its the last tangible thing we have left of her. Pets don’t leave much behind, except buckets filled with a bisque of fond and sad memories. I haven’t looked at these pics in a couple years, and when I did I could instantly remember exactly what her fur felt like. Finer than Kila’s, but not as much as Turtle’s, but softer, more like G’s hair. She’s buried in the backyard under a jacaranda tree that has never really thrived, along with a couple lava pebbles we brought back from the base of the Kilauea Volcano . We thought the purple bloom would remind us of her collar.

A few pics that captured her.

Mt Wrightston, March 1998

Cochise Stronghold, September 1999

For a few years, I labeled all my discs “Tsaina – Tuscon“. She was my road tripping companion on all those solo drives up to Phoenix for practice. I got started on mellow runzeheunding with her on my bike from our crappy house on Craycroft in Tucson up to the washes behind Ft. Lowell Park, where I’d have a party hat and play on little trials or take her for trail runs along the river.

peak of Pass Mtn, January 2001

Tsaina and Smudge, she loved him cause she saved him. She’s smiling even after a biopsy.

I had some nice pictures of her swimming in the river in front of Red Mtn at Granite Reef, but I didn’t feel like posting them. She loved to swim, and it was the best we could do to let her exercise once her leg became immobile with the tumor. I haven’t felt guilty about it for years, I just don’t know what to do with the baggage. When is an acceptable time to let it all go? When is an acceptable time to embrace dying?