Ode ~ Fetch, Catch, & Hide

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Here is another posting of Ode to share photos of his life with us. We miss him.
Ode LOVED to fetch anything that we could throw and he would bring it back to us so we could throw it again. I loved watching him fetch out in the water. Here he is bringing back a stick...

He would even fetch rocks. He had jaws that could pick up this huge rock and carry it... I was amazed by this.

He also LOVED to catch things that we could throw to him. My niece Julia is a walking dog encyclopedia and loves dogs more than anyone I have ever met. This day at the park, she was in heaven throwing this frisbee to Ode. I couldn't take enough photos that day. He was catching so many of the throws.

Ode also loved to play tug of war... :)

If he got something he wanted to protect, he would bury it. I watched him bury several tortillas.

One of Ode's favorite things to catch was a snowball. Aaron was always throwing snow to Ode and he would catch it in his mouth. It was always fun to throw snow to Ode, he didn't care how big the snowball was, he would always catch it in his mouth. This particular day was a couple of months after Aaron passed away and Aaron Jr and I threw snow to Ode for a while. It was so much fun. In fact, just a few days before Ode passed away, Sue said that Ode seemed really excited about the snow and that she was playing in their backyard playing catch with him.

Memories of Ode catching snow in his mouth now reminds us all of the final hours of Aaron's life.

Aaron had been sleeping that day and after he passed away, we all assumed that he had slept right through the day and then passed away in his sleep. His mom had run a quick errand in that early afternoon and I had taken Aaron Jr to a doctor appointment and had spent some time at my parents a couple of blocks away from Aaron's parents' house...

In that short time that Aaron's mom had run an errand, we found out after Aaron passed away from a next door neighbor, that she had seen Aaron out in the back yard with Ode for a little while. Aaron was throwing snowballs up in the air to Ode.

After that, Aaron and Ode went back into the house and Aaron had gone back to sleep before his mom got home, so she assumed he had been asleep the whole time. Then he passed away in his sleep within the next few hours.

Just knowing that in Aaron's final hours, he was playing catch with Ode in the snow, I wish we had been there with him to enjoy that time with him and Ode.

We sure miss them.

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