Dear Human Owners,

We know you must be worried about us, and we want you to know that we are OK. We're not sure exactly why we couldn't get back into the car after you stopped and let us out on the highway.

It was dark and we were frightened. I think maybe that is why we couldn't move quickly enough to get back into the car before it started up and took you away from us.

The man who found us was nice, but he seemed very sad. He was amazed that such a healthy, well-fed, cute-as-the-dickens litter of black and white mixed-Boxer puppies our age would be thrown out like trash.

Not long after you left a pickup truck drove by very fast. My sister, she is the one you called Boopsie, remember? Always saying she was so cute and clumsy? She couldn't get out of the way in time. I think the lights must have blinded her. She just whimpered once before it hit her. Then she was very still, and didn't make a sound.

I begged her and begged her to get up and follow me, I told her I thought I could find our way back home. But she wouldn't move so I left her there beside the road.

Then I started down that same road that the car you were in took you. I only got about 100 yards down the road from Boopsie when a car pulled out to pass another one. I could only stare in amazement.

That's where I was laying the next morning when the sad man, I know he was crying when he picked me up, put me in the back of his truck next to Boopsie. I wanted to lick his face to make him feel better but I couldn't move. The sad man said now we were in Doggie Heaven, and wouldn't ever have to depend on our human parents to care for us ever again. He said we were probably better off for that.

We hope you will be ok without us. Maybe Boopsie and I were just too much of a burden for you, and you'll be happier without us. The man who dug this nice bed for Boopsie and I on the side of a gently sloping hill, one overlooking a river bed that is millions of years old, he patted the ground down gently with his shovel to cover us.

He said between his tears that he would be glad to use thatsame shovel to get you ready for your own grave. Don't worry about us any longer. We are fine. We were frightened, and confused, and lonely for a short while, but now we are at peace.

Boopsie and her brother found outside of Uhland,TX on Hwy 21,
October, 2002
Joe Barr