In 2013, we walked into a small town animal shelter just to look. At the time, our second child was a preemie and all he did was cry — I think we thought the noise a dog would add would be nothing compared to a colicky baby. Our initial walkthrough the shelter didn’t really yield anything special and then in walked this dog. He was short and long and all ears and tail. We were so in love right away. He even responded to his new name right away and we just knew we had found our guy.

My husband is active duty military and Egon was my constant companion through deployments, TDY’s and the random weekends away. He ate everything. Everything. Lotion, bread, plastic bags, socks, anything and everything — he was insatiable. Egon could run three miles despite the short legs and he was always so joyful to have the wind in his face. He rarely barked, but when he did it was a huge, loud, scary bark. We all loved it.

One day, Egon stopped eating. Part of me thought it was just the deployment my husband is currently doing — maybe Egon was just sad. When I was told it was cancer, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. While we always said Egon was my husband’s dog, there was a large truth in the fact that Egon was my guy. There is something very final in a dog getting a cancer diagnosis. I never never felt more out of control of a situation. And then in walked Dr. Gillings at Summit Veterinary — I could tell it wasn’t good news, but I could tell she was going to lead me on this path.

We got to have Egon for three months before we finally had to say goodbye. It was a wonderful three months. I took him to street festivals, let him eat everything, and I took him to the ocean. He was busy, but at the end of the day he got to do what he loved doing the best — he lay down in a patch of sun and watched our three kids playing. There isn’t a day that has gone that we don’t miss Egon. He was such a good boy. It was desperately hard for us to say goodbye to Egon, my husband is still deployed and some of my children are quite young. But we tackled this just like we do everything, together as a team.