I’m afraid I have some very sad news to report. A few days ago, while we were out west visiting Arizona and Colorado, our beloved greyhound, Robbie, died unexpectedly and suddenly of bloat. He was two months shy of seven years old.

It happened overnight last Sunday night at the kennel where he was staying. It wasn’t the kennel’s fault; bloat strikes rapidly and without warning, and there was no indication anything was wrong until too late. I got a call early Monday morning giving me the news. I didn’t mention it here on the blog until now because I wanted to wait till I had had time to put together a proper photographic tribute. I’ve now done so; you can view 186 pictures and 12 videos of Robbie, from 2004 through 2008, on Flickr. (Slideshow here.)

The photo gallery traces not just Robbie’s life, but our lives over the last four-plus years: getting our graduate degrees at ASU and Notre Dame, moving in and out of various apartments, and criss-crossing the country by car, from Mesa to South Bend, then to Glendale and back to South Bend, and finally to Knoxville. In each place, we’ve found new places for Robbie to play, from Mesa’s Quail Run dog park, to the tennis court and lawn at South Bend’s Clover Ridge apartments, to Jay & Ashley’s back yard in Loudon, among others.

And of course, geographic changes haven’t been the half of it. Since adopting Robbie from the Arizona Greyhound Rescue in March of ‘04, Becky and I have gotten engaged, married, and had a baby. We’ve both earned graduate degrees, and have gone from being 21- and 22-year-old kids to 26-year-old adults. Oh yeah, and I briefly became a national media sensation — to the point where Robbie himself made the New York Times. :)

Through all these changes, we’ve had our gentle giant — our very own “40 mile-an-hour couch potato” — as a constant presence in our lives. Needless to say, he will be sorely missed.

Much more after the jump.

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