It's still hard after five years to talk about Misty. Two months before the above picture was taken we thought she might not ever walk properly again. It was Independence Day, and we went to see fireworks and left her and another dog in the back yard on the patio. While we were gone, someone tossed firecrackers over the fence. Misty was never gun shy, but that spooked her and she let herself right into the house - through the closed window. We came home to a bloody mess and a sliced digital flexor tendon in her left front leg. The ER vet did a fabulous job of repairing the tendon and after six weeks in a spoon cast and another six weeks of rehab she told us she wanted to show. She had eight points and a major toward her championship when she tore an ACL during a Working Certificate Test. After her surgery and recovery, we had her OFAs done - not good news. Maybe all of what she had gone through had caused compensation and excess strain on her hips, or maybe it was just the luck of the draw. But Misty came home to live out her life as the resident couch potato, a wonderful beyond words surrogate mother to every litter we had, and eventually became "Mama's Secretary". As she began to get older, Misty would lie curled up at Tricia's feet back when she was working from home as a Program Manager, and during conference calls everyone could hear her snoring contentedly. Before business began on one of these calls, someone asked her, "So Tricia - how's Mama's Secretary doing today?" and the nickname stuck.

When we lost her just days before our Club's Specialty in 2003, Tricia could not bring herself to mention it to anyone except a few of her closest friends. She went ahead and put on the show as Show Chair and then went home to grieve. A year later, she put a memorial ad in the Show Catalog. This is the text of that ad:

"We have a secret, you and I, that no one else shall know. For who but I can see you lie, each night in fire's glow? And who but I can reach my hand before we go to bed, and feel the living warmth of you and touch your silken head? And only I walk woodland paths and see ahead of me, your small form racing with the wind so young again and free. And only I can see you swim in evry brook I pass and when I call, no one but I can see the bending grass."

Her Pedigree: