Our sweet boy Cowboy Joe left us today. He and Charlie were playing rough in the backyard as usual and Charlie grabbed Joe’s collar, it got stuck in his bottom teeth and as they both twisted to get free Joe choked to death. By the time I went out to take them for their walk, realized what had happened, and got Joe’s collar off, he was already dead. We tried to revive him but he had been dead too long.

We cried a lot, and still are, and we buried him under his favorite squirrel tree. He was such a sweet love, and we miss him so much already. Charlie doesn’t even know what happened and hasn’t even started to miss him yet. We feel so lucky to have had Joe in our lives. We’ll remember his cute ears; sometimes he looked like Yoda and sometimes he looked like the Flying Nun. His beautiful brown eyes were full of love and trust and he always wanted to cuddle. We are so glad we had the chance to rescue him from dying in the desert and show him what it was liked to be truly loved. He showed us how to love, how to trust and how to live with joy. I’ll never forget what he looked like running across the property jumping like a gazelle.

Think of Joe with happiness for the joy he brought to us.