Maggie, Mags, Magpie, Maggie Lou, Pretty Girl. How you knew to answer to all of those names I'll never know. But, you did. You were frighteningly more than a dog, and, at times, you seemed almost human. You will always be loved, forever missed, and never forgotten.

Perhaps it was fitting that you were our wedding gift to each other, since you were key in helping us through the first few years of marriage.

You always knew when we were fighting, and you never let us stay mad. You would go back and forth from room to room until we came together. If we were sitting on the sofa or in the car you would stretch and lie down with your head touching one of us and your booty touching the other. You bridged the gap, literally and figuratively.

You would get upset too, but you forgave quickly. We should have learned that lesson from you sooner. You weren't with us as long as we wanted you, but, thankfully, you were with us for as long as we really, really needed you, even if it felt like we needed you a little longer.

Yes, you did get upset too, and, though you forgave quickly, your wrath was hard core, if somewhat hilarious.

Revenge a la Maggie: strategic digging, strategic escaping, and strategic peeing. If you were outside, and you wanted one of us outside with you, you would dig, dig, dig and bark, bark, bark. We figured out this little trick early on, although we never quite figured out what to do about it. You knew we would come outside to stop you, but that's all you really wanted anyway. You were so well trained and knew so much, you even knew every one of our responses to every one of your behaviors and manipulated that to your advantage.

I had never seen a dog climb a fence before until we spied on you to figure out how you were escaping from the backyard. Then, every time we thought we had fixed the problem, you would devise another method of escape. When you wanted to go with us, and we didn't take you, you would escape and run right up to us but not quite, almost as if to say, "See, you can't stop me." Then, up and down the block you would go just so we would chase you for the next 30 minutes.

The strategic peeing was the best...because it wasn't on my stuff. You definitely got your temper from your Momma, and she got it back from you. If you weren't getting the attention you thought you deserved, you would go find one of your Momma's shirts and bring it to her and pee on it, or pee on her side of the bed, or pee at her feet while she was working on the computer. These were no accidents, you were house broken in a day or two. No, they were revenge peeings. You would get in trouble and get put outside, which is exactly what you wanted to begin with.

Did you ever find a body of water, or pool, or fish pond, or puddle that you didn't dive into.

At just a few weeks old during our wedding rehearsal, you were compelled to dart across the law and dive into the goldfish pond. Not once, but twice. I wish I had known we would need a towel at the rehearsal. You weren't much bigger than most of those goldfish, but you scared them half to death. It's probably best that we left you at the hotel during the actual wedding.

Your first trip to the lake, you darted down a 60 foot ramp and flew off the boat dock into the deep. You nearly gave your Momma a heart attack. Before we even got off the truck, you were in the water. Then, off the back of the boat into the water. No skis, no tube, no life jacket. We did buy you a life jacket later for just such occasions.

Sprinklers beware. No sprinkler was ever safe. You enjoyed sprinklers more than any kid I have ever known. And not just sprinklers, any stream of water became your own personal water fountain and shower. There was no watering the rose bushes without watering the Maggie.

Taking you to the park the weekend of the rodeo was probably a mistake on my part. I didn't know there was a practice arena so close to the park. Jack Russells are bred to be fox hunters and should be comfortable with horses. I'm just glad those horses were comfortable with you.

No, the park was not quite interesting enough for you, you had to explore the smells and other animals on the other end of the parking lot. You terrorized a poor little girl (or, rather, her horse) getting her first riding lesson from her dad. He and the horse were far less concerned than I or the little girl.

You made your way into the practice arena with all of those horses, riders and trainers. I think you scared the people more than the horses. They weren't sure how the horses were going to react to you. I had visions of horses going nuts, riders being thrown, broken bones, and lawsuits, many, many lawsuits.

After chasing and barking at horses for about 10 minutes, I think you just got bored that the horses were ignoring you. You left the area like a sad cowgirl thrown from her horse. You even stopped at the exit and looked back, one more glance to see if the horses wanted to play. It was a Hollywood-type moment. A disaster averted, but just barely.

You rivaled Houdini in your escape ability. You put David Copperfield to shame with your tricks. But, the true evidence of your genius was your inventiveness.

You developed a soccer-style game on your own simply because I was busy cooking. You brought me your ball to play, not having a free hand I kicked it back to you, it got passed you through the doorway, and the game was on. Every doorway became a net for you to defend. You beamed with confidence when you caught or blocked the ball, and pouted when it got passed you. I wonder how long it took the inventors of soccer to come up with their version?

You were also the master manipulator. If Oliver had a toy you wanted, you would bring another and pretend it was more fun to play with it in the hopes that Oliver would abandon the one you wanted. You would get in trouble on purpose if the punishment meant you ultimately got your way. If you wanted to go outside, you would misbehave in a way that would result in you being put outside, e.g. peeing in front of your Momma. If you wanted a treat, you would voluntarily begin your wide array of tricks. Some how, some way, you only picked out toy animals that either looked like you (black & white) or that were puppies. I'll never understand that one. You would prance around the back yard carrying tree limbs in your mouth. Why? Who knows? But, the bigger the better.

Our games of catch with your tennis balls were legendary. You could catch almost anything. Slow pitch, fast pitch, over the should, under the leg, bounced off the back fence, it didn't matter. And you could throw too. You would get the ball in your mouth and either swing your head and release or build up momentum running and release. They were both effective.

You were the ultimate show off.

I guess it's not really Maggie-ese, it's just English, but how you understood what we were saying is beyond me. We even had to spell words around you so you wouldn't get excited when we were planning to G-O. "Has Maggie had a T-R-E-A-T today(?)," was another common one. If we had to talk about you without you knowing it was, "Are we taking M-A-G-G-I-E?"

O-U-T-S-I-D-E, W-A-L-K, but not, "Have you let Maggie out to go P..." That one didn't work so well. You went from laid out asleep to darting down the hall before I could even get out the "P". No need to really finish spelling P-E-E, I suppose.

And I have never met a human, much less a dog, who could communicate what they wanted better than you. Either you would mumble it in that weird language of yours, or you would take us to whatever toy was buried in a closet under three suitcases and a layer of dust long ago forgotten, or you would tattle on Oliver knowing that during his potty training you would get to go outside when he did.

We told Maggie stories the way new parents tell kid stories. We still do. We probably always will. Thank you, Maggie, for the stories. We are grateful for the time we had together.