Man, do I miss this dog. Raven was such a precious and special animal and I knew early on she'd break my heart, but she deserved to have that privilege. David came in one night in April 2003 from work and said he wanted Em and I to go with him to "look at a dog". Now, he is a smart man and probably knew that we would never be able to leave these adorable puppies without snatching one up for our own. He'd had a "Rottie" years before and loves the breed, but we have a small home and already it was occupied by my sweet, petite chihuahua, Chica (who deserves and will get her own blog someday) and our strange, but loved dearly cornish rex cat. I did not want another dog. REALLY I didn't, but I went. We got there and these people were nuts. They had these INSANELY aggressive rottweiler dogs and these cute little puppies all living in dirt; just fenced in dirt. Within the pups was this one, (the runt) who came right to me and she didn't want to leave. I fell in love. The kind of love that makes you do crazy things. We learned that these people didn't believe in "modern" medicine and gave these dogs herbs instead of shots (the vet said she had the worst case of worms he'd ever seen). I didn't care, we'd bonded. We paid them bunches of money and brought her home. The next morning I called David crying. She'd pooped and peed everywhere and I was not happy! I took her out in the yard and she just smiled at me. She really did smile. All the time she smiled at me. I decided I would love her and I would train her. I read books and with the family's help we trained her and she became the best pet, protecter, and friend anyone ever had. Before her first birthday we learned she had a common disease in her breed, hip dysplasia. We paid for her to have a hip surgery to keep her from being in pain. I knew from reading about her breed that dysplasia wasn't the only thing common, there was also cancer. I told David she would break my heart and in the spring of this year after only 5 1/2 years of life, my beautiful, precious shadow started getting swollen in her neck. I knew what it was. I cried and mourned before we even took her to the vet. Finally in July she looked at me and I knew she was done. She was tired and sick, and tired of being sick. We all took her to the vet and held her while she died. Man, do I miss that dog.