Nearly 15 years ago, we adopted our first Weimeraner from the Denver Dumb Friends League and quickly fell in love with the breed. This particular dog's name was Jake and he passed away in February of 2008. Jake lived to be 15 years old and in his last few days, I sat on his pillow with him late in January 2008 and stumbled across the Mile High Weimaraner Rescue page. I literally filled out the application and forgot about it for months while tending to our surviving Dalmation, Zoe. We received Jake's ashes in mid February and they sat on our mantel until spring, so we could bury him in rock garden to his tribute.

Strangely enough on a spring day in May, we buried Jake's ashes, planted some flowers, and put a memorial plaque that said "Jake's Rock Garden". Just as I began to water the garden, Darci called me from Colorado Springs and said that she had a Weimer that needed a home. A soldier was ready to be deployed to Iraq, and his wife was about to have a baby. It was a late Sunday afternoon, and I told Darci that we couldn't drive all the way down to Colorado Springs to pick him up. She told us not to worry, as she would deliver him with the appropriate paperwork.

Later that day, she arrived with Jager. When he arrived, our Dalmation did a "triple take" wondering if Jake had somehow returned. She went up to Jager and licked his forehead and that made if official - that this was his new home in May of 2008.

Since then, he has had his fair share of being spoiled. We have a VW van and he truly thought it was HIS van, he just let us drive it. He has been all over this state. And next month would have been his 9th birthday.

Unfortunately, he wasn't himself over the past few months and an MRI this past weekend revealed that he had a brain tumor. He came out of the anesthesia, and made it home the regular guy that he was. The next day, secondary complications occurred and Jager (a.k.a. Weimer) left this Earth this morning. A sad morning indeed. But the ratio of happiness that he brought us to the sad moments was 1 trillion to one.

Thank you Darci and the MHWR for bringing Weimer into our lives. Personally, my life is so much better when there's a Weimaraner around.

~The Gansmann and Pyle Family ~