Remembering Miss Maddie

It was 1999 and my brother Jake was playing a hockey tournament in Grand Rapids. Since our cabin is located nearby, our family decided to stay there instead of a hotel. One night, our Springer Spaniel, Duchess, inadvertently sampled some anti-freeze and the vet said she would be lucky to survive the night. Fortunately for us, she made it through and actually lived several more years until the ripe old age of 91.

The next day we headed into town for the game and happened to pass an old Suburban sitting in the KMart parking lot with a sign that read "AKC Chocolate Lab puppies." We still had some time before the game started, so of course we just had to stop. Given the close call the night before, it only took one look at those baby blue eyes and brown furry faces to know that we had to take one home. 

"How does one get a puppy into a hockey arena?", you might ask. Well that's easy. You stuff the puppy into the front of your daughter's high school letter jacket and hope that no one notices 1) that you are bringing a dog into a public place or 2) that your 17 year-old looks like she is pregnant and belongs on an MTV show. The same applies when sneaking a puppy into a pizza place. That night we returned to the cabin to find Duchess had sobered up from the night before and she was slightly bitter about the furry replacement we had just brought in. Over time they eventually learned to tolerate one another.

So that is the story of how Grand Lady Madeline joined our family. Over the years she would go on to eat socks and part of my graduation cake; she would learn to love the cabin more than any other place; she could sit for hours in an ice cold lake waiting for a duck to fly by; she would insist on being the first to depart the boat, even if it meant toppling people/chairs/objects to accomplish the task; and she would be loved by everyone no matter how much she shed, jumped, or hogged the bed. She will certainly be missed.