Today has been one of those days... I had to say goodbye to my partner of 9 years...

Max came to be my dog at 13 weeks old and instantly won over the family. After about a year, he showed interest in working and began his training. We spent months training and finally became a narcotics detection team. A year or so later, Max decided he wanted to catch bad guys and we began training for tracking. A short time later, we also received our tracking certification.

In his years as a K9, he has worked to catch bad guys and form bridges to the younger generation. Not only was he a competition winning K9, he was also a loved member of our family. In the past year, he had been having issues and was no longer able to do many of the things we had in the past. Seeing the pain in his eyes when he couldn't work was heart wrenching. He also didn't want to stay home because he was a "working" dog. Last week was the first time that he didn't TRY to get into the truck. I knew it was getting close to his time but it still hurts.......