I woke up early Sunday morning to drizzling rain and it just got worse from there.

Our 12-year-old yellow lab, Cassie, lay splayed on the sunroom porch floor, breathing funny (labored) and looking at me with her sad, sunken eyes. She'd been losing weight for weeks. We found out later just how much. As we put her on the scale at the Emergency Pet Center, she weighed just 38 lbs. -- half her body weight.

We brought her home on Memorial Day weekend -- just a few months after Dan & I were married. She weighed 5 lbs. and immediately attached herself to my husband. Cassie was his dog -- no doubts about who she prefered and her loyalty was admirable. Like any good lab, she followed her man everywhere he went. Gotta pee? I'll be right outside waiting for you. Sometimes her blind devotion annoyed the hell out of me.

She was a typical obnoxious puppy (good thing she was so darn cute), but she grew into one fine dog. We had invisible fencing, but we haven't put the collar on her in years because she never strayed far from home. And, if Dan was home, she never left his side.

She loved rides in the back of the truck, cleaning up dinner plates, walks around Bull's Dam and long, leisurly afternoons lounging in the grass 5 feet from her man. She hated other dogs, thunder and being splashed by pool water.

When it became clear, several weeks ago, that she was dying, I told Dan I didn't think she'd make it through May. He reached down (because she was, of course, at his feet), patted her bony rump and said, "Nah, she's got a good summer in her. Right, Cassie girl?"

As long as that dog was capable of following him around, I knew he could not put her down. Sunday, she couldn't get up. She was suffering.

The people at the Emergency Pet Center were kind, soft-spoken and appropriately somber at 7:30 a.m. when my husband and I came in, weeping, Dan carrying his Cassie girl. It occured to me that they must see a lot of tears at the pet ER and they've, no doubt, seen more than a few big burly guys giving into grief.

They gave us lots of time to say goodbye and we chose to be with her at the end. Dan wasn't about to leave her side.

Eye to eye, she died gazing into the eyes of the man she loved -- just like all the great love stories end.