"All good things are wild and free"

That's a quote by Henry David Thoreau. No one epitomized that spirit more than my parents' dog,

Gangsta 'Bu, decked out for a Roaring Twenties party

Wilbur. He loved to run free. He never met a fence he couldn't climb over. If someone left a gate or a door open a fraction of a second too long, he'd already snuck out of it, smiling as he ran away. To know Wilbur was to have spent time chasing him around the neighborhood.

When the vets first diagnosed the cancerous tumor on his face, they said he had only 6 months to live. That was over 6 years ago. But Wilbur finally met something from which he could not escape. The cancer grew too big and he grew too old to have any more surgeries to remove it. My dad let him loose on the beach one last time and then had to take him to the vet to be put down. I can only hope I'll be lucky enough to go out the way he did, with one last run and then a nice long sleep.

Wilbur lived a good, long doggy life doing what he loved, running, howling at squirrels and pawing at people until they pet him. He was a wanderer, an explorer through and through, sometimes running around for hours until we found him. He even went on a long road trip when my parents moved from New York to Florida (How he didn't manage to escape from the car during that trip is a miracle. He once jumped out of my mom's convertible while she was driving). Mr. Bu was all things wild and free and good. May he rest (and run) in peace.

Lyric of the moment: "Some of us are different. It's just something in our blood. There's no need for explanations. We're just dogs on the run..." ~Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers "Dogs On The Run"