Many of you may know that my husband was a K9 Officer for several years and that we had a K9 named Joker that was a Belgian Malinois. Joker was amazing! He was such a loyal, obedient, funny, and intuitive soul - more than just a “dog”. Joker loved working with his dad everyday, but once he retired, he loved the simple life of getting to sleep in our bed, go fishing and camping, and spend time in the backyard with the chickens.

At the beginning of 2023, we received some devastating news that Joker had an enlarged spleen/tumor that was too dangerous to operate on. Joker was given a few weeks, to maybe a month at most, to live. I kept telling him that if he could live until July, he would get to see his favorite camping spot one last time. In true Joker fashion, he did so. During our annual family camping trip, Joker’s health rapidly declined and we had to make the heartbreaking (but most humane decision for him) move to taking him to a local vet in town and have him put down. I don’t think I have ever been so sad in my entire life. Walking away from the vet leaving my boy there was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do - on the positive side, Gunnison had the most amazing vet clinic and Joker was treated so well.

A month or so later we returned to gather his ashes, and then took them back up to where he spent his final days and scattered some of them. Prior to this, Jake had spent many months perfecting a wooden urn to hold Joker with us forever. I’m so grateful we were able to go back to the mountains both us and Joker loved so much and leave part of him there. It will be bittersweet returning to the various locations every year.

These are the photographs I took of that weekend. About 98% of these images are shot on 120mm Portra 400 and 35mm Portra film. Scanned and developed at Indie Film Lab.

Here is Joker’s Instagram with some funny posts throughout his retirement!

And a blog post of some silly photos we took of him several years ago.