I woke up & she was dead in the backyard. I think she may have choked on something. Her eyes were open.

Her name is Indy. She would have been 10 years old in January (she was a pound puppy, so I don't know her real birthday - I just assumed it was in sometime in January as I got her in March & she was about 8-10 weeks old when I got her). She was an Australian Sheppard/Husky mix - a purebred mutt from the Harrisonburg, VA SPCA. She was named after Indiana Jones because he was named after his dog & that was one of my favorite sets of movies grown up as a kid.

We just moved to Las Vegas about a month & a half ago. At the recommendation of FT'ers, I drove her out her in 5 days rather than flew her. I'm glad I did. It was the first time she had ever had a fenced in backyard with a doggie door. She loved sitting outside in the backyard & just lying there. She also loved to play frisbee and go swimming.

She came from the Harrisonburg SPCA. When I went to pick out a dog, she was the runt of her litter. I actually didn't want the runt & took her and her 3 bigger sisters out in the yard to play. When I went to go fill out the paperwork, I decided to go back one more time to the cage to make sure I was picking the right dog. The runt came up to me & started jumping up & down and was so excited to see me that she peed on my shoes. How could I say no? I always told people that I didn't pick her, she picked me.

She was sort of a hippie dog in the sense that she didn't care much for the leash. I used to always take her everywhere on a leash, fearful that she'd run away. Then one summer, I took a 2-month cross-country roadtrip 1/2 personal travel & 1/2 working as a traveling chef. A good friend of mine, Jessica, watched her that summer. Jess took her to work with her at Natural Chimney park every day where she ended up running wild in the park with the other park employees dogs. That's how she became an off-leash dog.

I used to take her camping at the Boy Scout camp I worked at as a teenager during the off season. She was the kind of dog who you could let out of the tent in the morning & she'd wander off & go chase deer and rabbits and come back when she was ready. One time, I couldn't find her & I went down to the lake & she was swimming chasing ducks around, having the time of her life.

When I was in college, my roommate had a dog too - we built a large dog pen with a 6 foot wire fence for them in the backyard, so they could hang out back there (they would jump our four foot fence) while we in class. One time I came home from class & she was sitting on the couch staring out the window. I gave her a stern look & was confused because my roommate's dog was still in the backyard. It turns out, she had dug out under the fence, clawed through the screen door in the backyard (it was Harrisonburg, VA - a town where it was okay to leave your backdoor open) and gotten into the house. When I got home & looked at her, she knew she did something wrong & actually went back through the hole in the screen door, and crawled under the fence back into the pen & pretended that she had never crawled out.

She had commands like "take a bath" where she'd actually jump in the tub & wait for a bath. She loved to go on roadtrips and walks. She'd crawl into my bed at night when she was cold. She was scared of flashlights & vaccum cleaners - even brooms - pretty much any floor cleaning device. Greenies were like doggie crack to her - she loved them!

Indy was my first dog. She's wrapped up in a blanket in my living room right now as I've never had a true pet die before. I don't really know what to do. I think I'm going to get her cremated and take her ashes back to Virginia over the holidays & take her up to the Blue Ridge mountains and spread them.

My dog hasn't even been dead for a half day and I completely miss her already.

I love my dog.