TETON

We put our dog, Teton, down yesterday. It was unbelievably hard to do. He is 15 years old and has had tumors on his belly and legs as well as arthritis for quite a while. We knew that it would probably not be the best thing for him to move with us to California. The move would be hard on him. In the past few months he has not been quite himself and recently his back legs were not working very well making it really hard for him to walk up the stairs. Even though this was the best decision for him it was really, really hard. He has been such a good dog! He has been in Josh's family forever. They all have lots of memories with him and he was a great running dog most of his life. When we were moving to Buffalo Josh's parents asked us if we would bring Teton with us because they had moved and could not have dogs at their new house. There was no where else for Teton to go so we brought him out to Buffalo with us. I was okay with the idea but not excited about it. We agreed that he would mostly stay outside and he would sleep in the garage. That quickly changed to he could come in the house as long as he stayed on his pillow. That also quickly changed to he could be in the house and he could sleep in the house. Teton quickly became part of our family. I remember one day shortly after we moved here that I was sitting on the stairs crying for some reason and he came over and put his head in my lap. We were friends from that point on. He was such a mellow dog that he won the hearts of anyone who came in contact with him, especially all of Hayden's little friends. Our kids LOVED him! Both Hayden and Brinley's first real words {after mama & dada} were dog. I was worried about how the kids would handle his absence, especially Hayden. It has been about 24 hours and Hayden has not said anything about him yet. We are waiting for him to ask instead of bringing it to his attention. Josh and I have had some emotional moments over the past 24 hours thinking about how weird it is not to have him here anymore. We miss you Teton!