Rusty

Some of you may have seen our request for prayers on Twitter or Facebook for a difficult decision that we had to make today.  Our nine year old Brittany Spaniel dog, Rusty, had not been well for awhile and was progressively getting worse.  This morning, we finally had to say good-bye to him.  It was a very hard decision to make and one we did not take lightly.  He was our "first child" and a very big part of our little family.  We are very thankful to have a vet who knows us well and helped us through this day.

We adopted Rusty from a rescue organization right after we moved to Nashville, shortly after we were married.  As a puppy, he was all paws and ears, and we knew he was going to be a big guy.  We discovered shortly after adopting him that he had evidently been shot (grazed probably, but part of the copper bullet lodged in his skin) in the head and survived.  More than likely, he was dumped on the side of the road by his original owners when he wouldn't hunt.  But boy, could he run!  Rusty and I must have logged a thousand miles or more in a little over three years in the woods behind our apartment in Tennessee.  He drove me crazy a lot, but he was probably the reason I survived law school while Gray was at sea.  At nine years old, he still looked like a puppy for awhile after a good hair cut, and you could still see those leg muscles twitch when he started to run. 

Thank you for keeping us in your prayers as we deal with this loss.  We know it was in his best interest, but it's still very, very hard.  This picture was taken when Keegan was 3 months old - the way we want to remember him.  Thanks for the good times, Rusty...