Riddle

My parents gave Riddle to me when she was only 8 weeks old fifteen short years ago. The first three years of Riddles life her and I traveled to something like 20 different states. I showed her on the National circuit and she won her class at nationals two years in row. When I left for college Riddle stayed with my parents and that was the first time in 9 years we had been apart. But it didn't last long. As many of you know while I was attending school at Boise State I met a boy, no not Matt. We were very serious when we broke up I had a rough couple months. The word rough probably doesn't do it justice, to me it was nearly unbearable. That is when Riddle moved back in with me. She would run with me 3 miles every day at 11 years old. She slept on my bed and she never left my side when she found me in tears. To many of you this may sound silly but just thinking about it makes me cry again. Since then she has only not been with me the 1 year that I attended BYU-Idaho and was single.

Matt says that when we got married he didn't know about Riddle and that I was saving it so it would break the deal. Shortly after we were married I begged to bring her to live (illegally) in our little 3rd floor apartment. Riddle was Matt's first dog, that made for some good times. He had to do all of his learning with her. The deal was if she moved in with us she wasn't to be on any of the furniture. I obliged his requests. That first night she was in our apartment I left the room to brush my teeth. When I left she was sitting quietly on the floor. When I returned just 5 minuets later I found Riddle snuggled up to Matt on our bed. From that day forward she had furniture privileges.Riddle became my baby as she got older. She was often sick. In the last 4 years she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and has had surgery to remove parts of it, heart issues, allergies, asthma, arthritis that we treated with medication until she over dosed 2 years and was hospitalized for 2 days. Just after Keeley was born she suffered from a stroke that we didn't think she would survive, but she did and the only thing that reminded us of it was the slight tilt of her head. Most recently, I ran over her leg and she didn't even have a broken bone. Pretty good for her 13" statue.

Everyone worried what she would do when Keeley was born. But she instantly took her in as part of the family. Keeley's poking and prodding has always been endured with a good attitude. We knew she wouldn't be around much longer so for Christmas my parents gave us a ornament to make with her footprint, I finally got around to doing that last Friday afternoon.

That same night while we were out running errands she escaped though and open gate in the backyard. We were up until midnight looking for her and up again at 7:30 searching the neighboring developments. Riddle had started to lose her mind in the past few months often forgetting where she was or what she was doing so I am sure once she lost home it was a scary thing for her.

We have spent countless hours searching for Rids but nothing has turned up. We are pretty sure that someone picked her up and now has her in there home. We have fliers out to all the vet, shelters and on every door in our neighborhood asking people to call. But nothing.
We all miss her. But me the most.

Since Keeley's birth Riddle has gotten much less attention than she use to when she was my "only child." However, what that doesn't change is our history. To me it is like losing a good friend. In fact other than my family she is my oldest friend. We have been through a lot together and she will always be missed. I pray she will come home and she can spend the remainder of her time with us.

Sorry this got so long I just needed to get it off my chest.

Miss you Scoots!