My dog, Sparky, died today. He was our family pet for almost fifteen years -- since my brother Dylan, now a sophomore in college, was in kindergarten. I've known this was coming for a while; he's been going downhill the last year or so, and last weekend things started to get a lot worse. I'm just thankful he died while sleeping in my mother's arms (Mom was always his favorite person in the family) and that we didn't have to have the vet put him down.

Sparky was a real character. I used to say he was too smart for his own good. When he was younger, his leaping ability rivaled a cat's. One Christmas he scaled my 5 1/2 foot dresser -- jumping from a chair to the middle drawer, which I had left open a crack, and then climbing to the top -- and ate the better part of my Christmas candy. Except for the chocolate covered cherries, which he ate one of and apparently didn't like. That little twenty pound dog must have eaten three times his weight in chocolate over the years and never once got sick.

He also talked, or at least communicated, with his people. When he wanted in or out of a room, he would scratch lightly on the door (the doors in our old house all had three inch scratches around the bottom). If no one came to open it, Sparky would start yowling. It almost sounded like a little kid screaming. He was also the most irresistible beggar you ever met; I don't know how many extra treats or pieces of cheese he got just by following somebody into the kitchen and sitting hopefully at their feet. After we got our second dog, Griffey, Sparky quickly trained Griffey to move out of the way whenever he growled at him -- even after Griffey grew to be twice his size. In his later years, every bad thing that happened to him was Griffey's fault; if he came in out of the rain, he'd walk over to Griffey and growl as if it was Griffey's fault he got wet. When he was no longer able to take very long walks, we still could never be sure when he didn't feel well, and when he was just dragging his feet in hopes someone would carry him the rest of the way.

But, like I said, his smarts sometimes got him in trouble. He once ate an entire box of red hots accidentally left on the kitchen table (a big no-no during Sparky's most mobile years); we didn't realize what had happened until we realized he was drinking an unusually large amount of water. Sparky also figured out how to open the cabinet underneath the sink, where the garbage was kept -- by hitting the outside with his paw until it bounced open far enough for him to stick his nose in and push it open the rest of the way. One time, this foray into the garbage resulted in him getting his tongue stuck in an open can. My parents had to take him to the vet to get it removed, where the assistants took a picture because he was so cute.

Sparky was cute. We never did figure out what kind of mix he was. He had black curly hair, and a plumy tail, and the cutest face. Oddly, he was allergic to grass and fleas, which occasionally made his hair fall out or thin in the places where he was most itchy. He lost all the hair on his beautiful tail about four years ago and it never did grow back properly. Still, when we would walk him, we would constantly draw attention from others. Sparky loved it. If someone came up and petted him on his walk, he would literally strut for the next half block.

There are lots of other stories I could tell about Sparky: how he loved having his chin scratched; how he'd recognize the stockings being hung on Christmas Eve and get excited because he knew he'd get treats the next day; the way he responded to horses when we'd drive past them in the car. It's going to be so strange to go home on Tuesday and not see him curled up in his beanbag in the living room. I miss him already.