At 1:30 today my parents have to do a horrible thing. They have to put our family dog down.

You'd think with all of the close calls and near misses over the years I'd have had this obituary all planned out. Or maybe even when the veterinarian gave him two weeks to live about two weeks ago. But I haven't.

Sebastian was born in the spring of 1994, I'm going to say sometime in March or April. Puppy of a black lab mother and a "black dog" father, he was the runt of the litter. His diminutive size helped him earn the nickname "Baby". This was also helped along when I left for college in the autumn, and my brother left a year later. My parents weren't "empty nesters" - they still had Baby.

Sebastian was a rowdy child for my parents. For all of us. One year at the holidays I was home from California, up late at night talking to a friend in California on the phone. Sebastian had run off earlier that evening, and everyone had given up and gone to bed. The thing is, it was snowing like crazy outside. A positive blizzard. I was freaked out that he'd come back to the door - but we'd all be asleep and we'd wake up to a frozen dog on the doorstep. I went outside and yelled his name until he came home. But he came home. He always came home.

He lived to see a rather old age for a dog. Three years ago when I lived at my brother's house, we used to watch Sebastian when my parents would go out of town. At this point he was in the double-digits. Being the first one up in the morning, I was always afraid to walk downstairs and find Sebastian had passed away in his sleep. A few times it seemed pretty close - by that point in his life he was pretty deaf - so I'd have to stomp and clomp around to wake him up. But he always woke up.

There are many, many other death-defying stories that I could share: close-calls with snowplows, phone calls from random strangers towns away who found him wandering on their property after he'd run off. But they all end the same way, that he was a lucky dog.

Almost three weeks ago I was at my brother's house and he was watching Sebastian. Over the summer he developed some kind of growth on his eyelid, but I'd seen it and was used to by now. In the meantime he'd also grown a tumor on his jaw. I hadn't seen that yet. He looked horrible, but still danced on my brother's wooden floor when I saw him.

That was the last time I saw him.

Shortly after that, the vet gave her two week prognosis. I guess we've all known this was coming - he is, after all, fourteen and a half years old.

Still, it's tough. This last Monday I was at my brother's house helping with some work. At five we took a walk to the local grocery store. We went the back way, the way that my brother used to walk Sebastian when he was watching him. I think we both knew that he'd never walk him again.

Tomorrow we're going up to my parents' house, I wish he'd have made it one more day. I just want to say goodbye. Goodybye to the Baby. He was a lucky dog.