But knowing it's right doesn't make it easier.  Lying on the grass in the backyard, Snug between us trying to trust us as the vet starts the injections, Snug trying to trust us as her cancer-addled brain struggles against the sedative, we hushing her back down just like we did that very first night she came to us, a scared puppy needing reassurance that she was safe and that it was okay to let go and sleep.  Now once again we held her and hushed her and helped her back down to sleep.

All week I'd been making morbid death jokes, convincing myself it was okay and I was okay.  But as our now-at-rest dog lay between us, soft and trusting and loving and at Peace, I felt no Peace.  Just loss.  I convulsed, wailed, rocked, uncontrollably keened.  Not for her, but for me, for our boys who had said their goodbyes to their one and only childhood dog in the summer, for our family forever changed.

Hers was a blessed life, and of giving blessing.  Puppyhood on the farm then in the Monteverde cloud forest was free-range, communal, natural.  She would jog with me straight up the mountain for our morning plunge in the creek - casting longing looks up at the monkeys who replied by throwing sticks down at her - then hang out at the town center letting lonely backpackers love her up.  Sparky and Licho and all the neighborhood dogs would come by for their morning visits, almost on a regular schedule.

She greeted all loving people and dogs with an unabashed "LOVE ME" wiggle, and disarmed closed people and aggressive dogs with a quizzical "I don't get it" wiggle.  For five years in St. Paul - the only time she ever knew a leash and even then very rarely - she insisted on greeting the grumpy old man on the corner who clearly didn't want her love.  Was this the one malfunction of her otherwise-unerring radar for who would love her and who to leave alone, or did she sense a loneliness and hurt in this man, a need for connection that even he didn't embrace, that I also should have tried to see?

Thank you, Snug, for being a loving constant in our family through three homes and countries.  For showing us the way of truly unconditional, universal love.  For overcoming your first cancer and amputation so that you could see our boys through graduation and release us all onto the next phase of our journeys.  Thank you for that last morning swim in the Mississippi River, and the last "Snugasana" snuggle in the grass, held by the family and global community who will always love and treasure you.