Joe left us in mid 2010.
When the book was written he was alive and well, but he succumbed to a series of fits brought on by rapidly mounting organ failure, all dating back to his days of being slowly starved. Fortunately it was very quick. One day he was absolutely fine. The next he was gone.
Despite being with us for only six months, Joe was a very significant presence in our lives. He was big and funny and loving and a joy to have in the house. We miss him terribly and he is the first avatar we've lost.
However, when he died he returned to his angelic state and started communicating with us immediately. He's now in residence in our house and that's very comforting.
You'll be able to read more about what happened in the second book.
Like Arianna, we never took enough pictures of Joe.
Here he is with Kaiti. They got on surprisingly well.
He wasn't as huge as he appears here. He's just a lot closer to the camera than Kaiti and the perspective is playing tricks on you.
The most striking feature about Joe was his endlessly good nature and perpetual state of happiness.
Here he is helping me to write his chapter for the book.
We loved each other a great deal and like Ktuu has bonded with Sharon, Joe was very much my dog.
Imagine cuddling him and burying your head in that wonderful deep mass of red fur.
What a joy.
Although he had never lived indoors before, Joe took to being a house Husky with absolute ease.
In fact, he'd only want to go out if there was food to be had.
This will probably remain my favorite picture of Joe.
It was taken when Angie and Diego were visiting us with their girls.
Here he is with Valeria
They clearly adored each other and his expression is one of dewy eyed pure bliss.
Both Valeria and Natalia were heartbroken when they heard he'd gone.
They were not alone.
JOE
This photo only came to light when our daughter Jenny discovered it in her camera's memory.
It's a beautiful one and I'd have put it in the book if I'd have known about it before.
If you could see it at full size, you'd see how gorgeous Joe's eyes were.
Here's Joe in the thick of things with Angie and Diego's daughter, Natalia.
In front is Dougal, to the right of the photo is Molly and at the back in Ktuu.
Notice they all appear to be headless except Joe. It's very difficult to get a good picture with more than one dog in it!
SOME DOGS ARE ANGELS