Seeing Bode Miller take the Gold makes me sad. I’m glad for Bode, but he brings back bittersweet memories of what once was.

In 2002 I sat watching the Winter Olympics next to a whelping box. We had just had a litter of two puppies; one male, one female. I was pretty much a captive audience. Bode Miller made quite a splash that year. I liked his back story about how he was born to kind of “hippie” parents and had lived a pretty bohemian lifestyle. A real laid-back kind of guy. The male pup had kind of the same laid-back attitude and had been born more or less of “hippie” parents (a mistake breeding of Millenia and Sailor due to us thinking Millie was out of season when she really wasn’t), so I named him Bode after Bode Miller.

Bode was a beautiful dog. A good soul. The name fit him as he was very laid-back. And very sweet. My Jo-Jo-Bean, as I liked to call him. Follow this link to Bode’s page on our Bernese Mountain Dog web site which is woefully out of date. Be sure to look at all three of Bode’s photo pages. See what a cute puppy he was? He had certain faults that kept him from the show ring, but in my eyes he was perfect. He had a big plume of tail that he carried over his back (his one major cosmetic flaw) which was always wagging. He was always smiling. I miss that dog.

He had his own mind. Several times at the cabin he wandered off and Rick would find him heading off across the prairie on his own. Where was he going? we asked ourselves. The wrong direction, Bode!

He loved to sit up and gently put his big old paws on you, like this photo taken just one week before we lost him.

He gave us lots of love in his short life. We miss you JoJo! We miss Bode’s sister Daisy too, who passed over the Rainbow Bridge just seven months after Bode. Maybe she missed him too.