Today …. marks Lalla’s fifth birthday. This time ‘round, although I honor this day, it will go without dinner on the beach and a new collar. It will go by quietly this evening as I try to find Lalla’s star in that big ole sky and celebrate her indomitable, happy and fearless spirit.

I wonder, what would Lalla like me to say to you all today? How happy she is she can run with the wind? I know she is. How happy she is to know friends like you – and I think she knows you all better than I ever will from wherever her new sky or star-high home is – she does.

I’m glad the love I will always have for Lalla and my imagination can place her in these happy places. She is teaching me so much to this day; with a practical, almost clinical eye I look back at how young Lalla was when she was diagnosed – only 3, and how similarly young she was when she left – not even 5. She fell in that very narrow percentile margin of dogs under 7 who are struck with cancer, but was still in that dismaying ration of 1 in 4 dogs who will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. I realize more and more that she was a medical miracle in her own right, for she survived those two years after her diagnosis without chemotherapy or radiation.

We, as dog humans in a particular situation know how much our Tripawds love every minute we have afforded them in this life, before and after their diagnosis. We, as Tripawd humans, have received everything back in return – doubly so.

So Lalla lives on in the gift she has given her family and everyone who knew her – to seize the wave in every day.