Murphy Was Not Marley

If I only had a dollar for every time anyone asked me Have you read Marley and Me?  The minute anyone hears you are owned by a yellow lab they instantly think the lab is just like Marley.

Labs, like humans, are unique and different.  Sage is so very unlike Murphy I sometimes have to check her papers to make sure she is a lab!  

While Murphy had many silly moments, and a few times when we stared each other down from 100 yards when she was chasing a Dalmatian (why is it always a Dalmatian?) across football fields, she really was a well behaved, great dog.  Ok, there was the toilet papering incident, but she clearly felt guilty and I needed the laugh.  But she never destroyed furniture, never ate doors, never hurt anyone, and indeed never stole food from the counter tops.  Murphy was a gentle soul, who until the very end, gave her heart.  She went on walks down steep ravines, crawled under logs, and sloshed through cold streams even though her body had horrible arthritis.  She did it because I was walking.  

There are many lessons to be learned from Murphy.  One of them, certainly, is that you can be noble, graceful, elegant, and still be a lab.

Murphy's day.