losing things

Yesterday marked one year since Samantha when to play with the Big Dog. Most days I just remember her fondly and laugh. On some days, like yesterday, the memory of it all comes crashing back. It's harder still when something happens to remind me of how much we love our pets and how it hurts so much when they are gone.

When I lost my princess, it felt like someone had drilled a hole through my heart while I was sleeping. Every day when I woke up I could feel the wind whistling through the vast, open, space.

Time is both forgiving and cruel. A year on and my heart is nearly filled back in. A year later and we have a new, very energetic beagle in our home, annoying and delighting our little old man to no end. A year ago I had my hard drive replaced. The things I thought that were so important to back up turned out to be the least important of all. Project files, old emails, and other crap fill up two years worth of CDs marked "Lucy B/U disk 1 of 2 _date_".

This weekend, I spent hours scanning old back ups trying to find a video we took of Samantha and Rocky howling together. While Rocky and Paddi are great friends, they just don't do the things that Samantha and Rocky did together. They're so much alike but so different. No more tug of war, no more howling in unison, no more napping in the same bed. All I want is to find that video. But time has played havoc on my memory and I can't remember which back up might contain that moment when Rocky and Samantha were at their beagle best.

ETA: Found it. It was in a restored file hiding from me. Whew! For your viewing pleasure: