She was a (mostly) good dog

We said goodbye to Badeaux today. Twelve years ago we picked her out of a litter of 10 red bone coon hound/lab mix pups at the shelter. She was the prettiest. Our old dachshunds raised her up and tried to teach her to be brave, but she didn't have it in her. She was afraid of parked cars, cardboard boxes, loud noises, fireworks, thunder.... She spent every July 4 in a corner of the bathroom, panting and quivering.

I changed the headline to mostly good, because I remember now she did bite people. Just three, or maybe four, and only hard enough to bruise. And she did remove Jack's eye (he never forgave her). She was energetic, protective and a little squirrelly.

She loved sniffing around in the woods when we went huckleberry picking. And she loved her home-cooked dinners. She humored us by playing "Got Your Nose." She romped like a pup until she came down with hideous monster mouth cancer just a few months ago.

On her last day she had ice cream and wieners, and we fed her bits of Lindors chocolates while we waited for the vet to come. Why the hell not?

I'll miss you, Ba-doofus. Ba-dingleberry. Ba-diddlehopper. Ba-doober.

Above, her baby picture as she stands head and shoulders above the rest of the team. :) That's, from left, Debbie, Mikki, Badeaux and Lulu (one of the seven great dogs). Below, she's playing with Rosebud, another of the seven. And below that, she's on the kids' porch with Jeep.