Our front porch looking in...: our sweet yellow dog, Copper.

The actual day of Halloween was pretty awful for us.

We said goodbye to our sweet Copper boy.

Back in April we had one of his eyes removed because of a tumor. I think it was around 2 months later he started showing signs of having trouble with one of his hind legs. It's slowly became very difficult for him to stand up and frequently his hind legs would slip out from under him when he was trying to walk. Our vet suggested we try cortizone shots with him to rule out arthritis. Unfortunately, it didn't help. We did what we could to keep him happy.

We got Copper when Daniel and I were both in college. From the start he was loud; I don't think my family ever had a dog quite as loud as him! When we got pregnant with Jacob, Copper would jump onto the couch or recliner (whatever I was sitting in) and lay in my lap--we used to say he was hatching the baby. Copper made sure nobody was going to mess with either me or our kids. I remember when Jacob was a baby and my mom's cousin, Annie, was holding him at my mom's and giving him a bottle--Copper sat right in front of her the entire time as if to say "I'm keeping my eyes on you, you're not doing anything with my baby." He really stuck next to me for the past 8 years. I'd say he was protective of me before we had kids also but it really started up once Jake was born. He was a part of our family, one of our babies before we had kids. Our kids loved him to pieces. So did we. Saying goodbye to our pup was probably the hardest thing we've had to do so far in life. I know he's happy and healthy again in heaven and in time our hearts will heal.

our yellow boy.

We'll see how Ringo does without his brother. He's 2 years older than Copper and from what we can tell is deaf now and his eyesight is going as well (he also had an eye tumor that resulted in his eye being removed). We always joked around saying Copper was Ringo's seeing eye dog so I'm not sure what he'll do now.