WEIMARANER -- Silver colored, short coated, big game hunting dog. Originated in Germany.
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'Professor' on the eve before her rear leg amputation.

Diagnosis: CANCER

CLOSING a page to open another, we posed for 150 shots taken by professional photographer, Bill D'Espinosa, in order to remember time as it once was.

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After her surgery that next day, Tufts called. Professor "was the unfortunate one", they said. Of all the cancer patients scheduled for surgery that week, Professor was the only animal sent home without surgery. Her cancer had traveled into her pelvis and spine. All of the other amputees to be, went on without her.

She came home with Valentine's Day upcoming. I was sorry that I would know it to be her last.

A year later however, and on Valentine's Day, photographers clicked away in my face for a huge color photo to appear front page. Professor, alive and well, with my arms all around her, looked square into those cameras.*

Perhaps she was seening the faces of Simon and Cheyanne, Mister and Rauleigh, Varney, Tobey, Izzy Calvin and Brando, her friends from the operating room who had gone on to their surgeries without her.

With chilling shock, the doctors and I had seen each one of them die throughout the year, the last on New Year's Eve. Professor lay beside many of them in their homes as we, the families stricken, dropped ceremonious heads to the latest loss.

Two weeks after Valentine's Day, TV crews were assembling to come visit Professor. They had heard she had become suddenly ill. But before they could arrive, she was gone. On March 18, 1999 Professor Zimbabweeps reluctantly let go of her mother's arms all around her.

It was time for her to catch up with old friends. For again, they had gone on without her.