Turk (February 19, 1999 - October 2, 2006)

Yesterday was not a great day. When LT and I got home from our trip, our buddy Turk was in very bad shape. His legs were no longer strong enough to support his body. We took him to the vet, who told us there was nothing they could do aside from heavily drugging him. Even that wouldn't really make the pain go away. So we decided to let the big baby go to the "rainbow bridge."

Anyone who met Turk would tell you that he was the sweetest and gentlest dog you'd ever meet. He was sometimes goofy, a friend of Dave Law, and even a good drinking buddy.

Turk's favorite place in the world was Fort Funston, a dog park in San Francisco. The park is great - it is wide open, on cliffs overlooking the Pacific, with access to the beach below. Turk loved nothing more than just running around, smelling the smells, greeting the hundreds of dogs that go to Fort Funston each weekend. After a long run at Funston, he'd come home, plop down on the couch, and sleep away the rest of the afternoon. That was his perfect day.

Well, since being diagnosed with bone cancer last December, Fort Funston has been off limits. The danger of him running or playing too hard and breaking his leg was just too much. So Turk's life has been incomplete for the last nine and a half months. The average life expectancy for dogs with bone cancer is 2-4 months, so we were lucky to have him this long. Turk was a fighter. But he would have loved nothing more than to go for one last run at Funston. LT and I are hoping that there is a nice big dog park where he is now (aside from the 72 great dane virgins that he gets for having lived a virtuous life). Here are some shots of how we like to remember him, running at funston when his legs were stronger:





Wherever he is, we just hope that he knows that his mommy and daddy loved him to pieces. We suspect that he does...