Tyler

When I was in fifth grade, my family adopted a mutt from the local Humane Society. I came home from school one January afternoon to find our family suddenly one member larger. My parents named him Tyler, after President Tyler. (My dad is an American history buff. The first dog my parents adopted together was Sherman, after General Sherman.)

Our guess was always that Tyler was some mix of German Shepherd/Lab/Spaniel - due to his black and brown fur coloring and the curly hair on his ears - but as my husband and I learned when we had Ginny's DNA tested, mutts can look a lot like breeds they aren't. Tyler was only a couple months old when we got him. He would be an adorable part of our lives for more than sixteen years.

Today would have been Tyler's 17th birthday - but unfortunately we had to put him down this summer. Here are some pictures of Tyler since 2005. (Pictures before 2005 are not on my computer, so I don't have any adorable puppy pictures here to post - just Tyler as a 7-16 year old dog.)

He had some trouble getting up and down as he got older. I think I would too, if I were over 112 in dog years!

Tyler got to meet Ginny toward the end of his life. We got Ginny in June this year, and we put Tyler down at the end of July. She was very excited to meet another dog - but Tyler wasn't as excited. (She was a little rowdy for him.)

Tyler loved getting in the middle of handing out Christmas gifts every year. Maybe because we were all crowded around in a circle with some of us sitting on the floor. Maybe because we always gave him a treat every time we went around the circle distributing gifts. Maybe both. :)

The blur of action.

This is a watercolor I painted of Tyler in 2005, in my senior year AP Art class. It was based on a photograph of him wearing a flowered lei.

More Christmases!

At my mom's feet - where he so often could be found.

He lived a great, long life and even toward the end didn't act consistently sick - which is why it was such a hard decision to put him down. He lost a lot of his eyesight and hearing toward the end, and had trouble walking and getting up and down. In the last ten years of photos I went through, it wasn't until I got to 2008 or 2007 that I started seeing evidence of him playing and chewing bones again. For the last several years he was a calm, sleeping, cuddling dog.

You will be missed, Tyler!