The Feathered Hat
Active member
Thank you.
We are... well, it's still very difficult. Last night was our first night coming home from work without Tuck and Polly both there to greet us at the door, and Cindy and I were overcome by sadness. It's going to take a long, long time for our hearts not to sink whenever we return home. This isn't fair to Polly, who has been steadfast and wonderful throughout this terrible ordeal, but I'm afraid it's the truth.
Last night I remembered a wonderful moment with Tuckerman. It was on our first real hike together, back in February 2009; he was just five months old. We climbed up to Bald Peak, below North Kinsman, in fresh, beautiful snow. He had been so good on our little training walks that I let him off-lead for the first time. As it happened, we broke out the quarter-mile spur to the peak that day in about a foot of powder. After enjoying the view at the peak for a few minutes we began our descent, and Tuck took off like a shot into the snow, roaring down the trail over our fresh snowshoe tracks and crashing headlong into the powder at the bottom of a little pitch -- he came up smiling from floppy ear to floppy ear and immediately did it again. And again. He gave me, that day, a show of unbridled, unhindered joy; I'd never seen joy like that, so pure and purely expressed, in my life. It was the happiest I've ever seen another living being.
I will never forget it, even if the memory will now always catch in my throat. Tuck gave me a wonderful gift that day and it deserves, like all great gifts, honor and place of pride in one's life. And so it has in mine.
Tuckerman never lost his love of snow, so he was happy when we all discovered that Polly loves the snow as much as he did. Here are three photos of the two of them from the winter of 2009-2010 expressing that pure happiness that's so elusive for we mere humans:
We will always miss our Tuck, our Big, Big Boy, but at the same time we are filled, always, with his generous, abundant gifts of love and joy. He taught us more about how to be human than we could ever teach ourselves.
We are... well, it's still very difficult. Last night was our first night coming home from work without Tuck and Polly both there to greet us at the door, and Cindy and I were overcome by sadness. It's going to take a long, long time for our hearts not to sink whenever we return home. This isn't fair to Polly, who has been steadfast and wonderful throughout this terrible ordeal, but I'm afraid it's the truth.
Last night I remembered a wonderful moment with Tuckerman. It was on our first real hike together, back in February 2009; he was just five months old. We climbed up to Bald Peak, below North Kinsman, in fresh, beautiful snow. He had been so good on our little training walks that I let him off-lead for the first time. As it happened, we broke out the quarter-mile spur to the peak that day in about a foot of powder. After enjoying the view at the peak for a few minutes we began our descent, and Tuck took off like a shot into the snow, roaring down the trail over our fresh snowshoe tracks and crashing headlong into the powder at the bottom of a little pitch -- he came up smiling from floppy ear to floppy ear and immediately did it again. And again. He gave me, that day, a show of unbridled, unhindered joy; I'd never seen joy like that, so pure and purely expressed, in my life. It was the happiest I've ever seen another living being.
I will never forget it, even if the memory will now always catch in my throat. Tuck gave me a wonderful gift that day and it deserves, like all great gifts, honor and place of pride in one's life. And so it has in mine.
Tuckerman never lost his love of snow, so he was happy when we all discovered that Polly loves the snow as much as he did. Here are three photos of the two of them from the winter of 2009-2010 expressing that pure happiness that's so elusive for we mere humans:
We will always miss our Tuck, our Big, Big Boy, but at the same time we are filled, always, with his generous, abundant gifts of love and joy. He taught us more about how to be human than we could ever teach ourselves.
