Gus (Chocolate Lab)

Gus was a chocolate Labrador with a barrel chest, a gray muzzle, and the deeply held belief that every body of water existed for his personal use. Elliot brought him home as a clumsy puppy in Traverse City, and Gus spent the next thirteen years turning ordinary walks into expeditions. Mud was never an accident. It was a lifestyle. He was gentle with children, suspicious of vacuum cleaners, and heroic in his commitment to retrieving tennis balls that nobody had asked him to retrieve. At the lake, he would launch himself off the dock with total confidence and return with the expression of a dog who had just saved civilization. When age slowed him down, Gus still made it to the shoreline every morning. Some days he only stood there, nose lifted, taking in the wind. Elliot says the house feels too clean now, which is another way of saying it misses him too.