Goodnight, you moonlight Bradys

and rock-a-bye sweet Brady Jane

deep greens and blues are the colors I choose

won't you let me go down in my dreams

and rock-a-bye sweet Brady Jane.

Brady paseed away today. We used to manipulate the lyrics of songs to fit her name and Sweet Brady Jane was always my hands down favorite.

I won't go into the details of how hard it was to decide to put her down or how it was even harder to say goodbye to her, but I can tell you that she went easily and Kris and I felt a wonderful sense of peace in the room after she had gone.

Being sick and pregnant required food. Being Italian and overly emotional also requires food. So we held Brady's wake at Panera. And as it happens at most wakes, we inevitably wound about talking badly about the dead.

"You know, she was kind of aloof, for being 'man's best friend' and all."

"Yeah, and really there towards the end she kind of treated us like we were staff"

Brady was always an individual with a Greta Garbo complex. She would wander off and isolate herself in her cage in the laundry room if we were suddenly too much for her. Don't bother to follow, she'd just go somewhere else.

Once, when my sister was in high school she took the dog to her boyfriend's soccer game. Brady politely laid down on the sidelines, well out of the way of the action. My sister sat down next to her, and Brady got up and walked five feet further down the line and sat down.

In recent years, when we would pick her up from the kennel, she was able to muster zero excitement to see us, she'd give us a quick glance as if to say, "Did you pay? Did you get my things? Let's get out of here" and head straight for the door. We's stand there momentarily rejected amidst the spectacle of other owners reuniting joyfully with their pets , and then we'd follow her out to the car.

That's about the worst you could say for her, aside from incontinence. As an attribute it's really not desirable in any companion canine or otherwise.

She was a survivor. She once ate a bag of semi sweet chocolate chips, covered her entire sleeping bag in chocolate vomit and lived to tell about it after racking up an emergency vet bill $3 under her limit of $500.

She was shot in the back leg by a Swamp Yankee with a bb gun and didn't do anything more than limp for a week. Also, we weren't even aware she was shot until much later.

She overcame terrible food allergies. She did this mainly by eating the all natural holistic dog food I fed her, but she did her part.

She was sweet, really, really sweet. When we got the kittens she would carry them around and lay them down between her paws and the three of them would sleep in a cuddle puddle.

If you were ever crying, she would cry with you, whining away, "ow ow ow" until you stopped, mainly because you felt bad for making the dog cry.

The little girls in our neighborhood loved her tremendously. We were in high school and hardly had time for her, but this little gang of eight year old girls would show up at our house after school asking, "Can Brady play?" and my mom would hand them the leash and they'd all trot off down the street. They'd put a tutu on her and a crown and roller skate around her in their driveway. She loved it.

Brady loved kids. She loved to wear her Nittany Lion costume at tailgates because kids were always running up to her to pet her and have their picture taken with her.

Like any good Labrador mix she loved the water. She used to bark at us from the dock if we swam too far out, then she'd run to the shore, then back onto the dock, then back to the shore, and resignedly swim out to you and try to drag you back in. When we were in the Outer Banks we'd take her to the sound and she could wade and float effortlessly and all she wanted to do was fetch. Throw her a stick out of water and she would give you the stink eye, fail to throw her something while she was in the water and she'd pull your flip flop out of your hand and be gone.

She had wonderful manners, she'd never jump up on you, never lick you. Seriously. I think she licked me a total of five times in her whole life. In the latter part of her life she liked to be in whatever room we were in. Never intrusive, she just found a good corner and hung out. When she was younger you could walk a perimeter with her, take her off her leash and she wouldn't leave that box. She also knew a few good tricks. If you held up a beggin strip and said, "brady, give me love!" she'd stand on her back legs and dance around. If you pulled a fake gun out of an imaginary hip holster and shot her, pow!pow! and yelled "Dead Dog" she'd lay down, roll over, and put one paw in the air.

She was a good friend and a damn good dog. Thanks for 17 wonderful years girl.