Our family dog, Courtney, passed away last week. I drew this in 1992 when she was still a puppy -- playing with stuffed animals, chewing buttons of my mom's clothes, running so fast we couldn't catch her -- and as kids are prone to do in middle school art class I drew what was most important to me. She could be a super-strong mutt street dog, a thirty-pound dog that still took eight Marines to hold her down in order to give her shots at the vet, and she could also be a calm, relaxed dog, one that could sit for hours with you on the cliffs looking down at the ocean below.

She absorbed a lot of sadness, anger, happiness, and love, and I hope that it's the latter two that expressed themselves most in her life, and it was the last of these, love, that wanted to keep her alive as long as possible. Although she was no longer the puppy, playing with her toys and wrecking laundry, I wanted to believe that she was still my super-strong dog that could fight off a squad of Marines if she had to in order to keep going.

She had made a remarkable recovery when I saw her a month and a half ago. She went from death's bed to wagging her tail, hustling for food, prancing about, and still watching life bustle about her from her perch by the window, but looking at her body one could see what she was fighting through, and as strong as she still was, we would soon have to say goodbye.