Finally, I am beginning to feel some closure about Daisy. We brought her home on Friday, in a manner of speaking. Her ashes are contained in a foot-long cedar box with the engraving I requested,"I'll give you a daisy a day, dear." DAISY 12/16/96 - 6/24/06. She is lying in state near her bed for now, but we'll make a place for her under some bricks in the front garden where she loved to sit on her chaise mat and bark at the world. That is where she'd want to be if she were still here, in the garden with her mom. She always will be now. Of course, to paraphrase another dog writer, she really will lay buried in my heart.

Along with her ashes, we received Daisy's pawprint pressed into clay. I have to bake it to harden and preserve it. How I loved holding those big paws in my hands and stroking the soft part underneath them. She loved that, too. I remember how she used to clutch my arm with her paws, a dog hug. Bubba doesn't do that. She loved me so.

I also went and picked up the DVD I had made of the video tape I took during her last couple of days with us. I am so grateful to have it now, and Bubba is preserved on there, too. I only wish I could have gotten the full hour on the tape before the battery went dead. At least I have half an hour of her barking and gazing up at me adoringly with those melting chocolate eyes. And her last walk at the park with Bubba and me, which I now realize was too much for her on that warm June day. But she always wanted to go, go, go in the car. How could I refuse?