Frisbee Dog, originally uploaded by pmarkham.

When Belle was young, her absolute favorite thing to do was to play frisbee. She was very good at it too. She was one of those dogs that could leap into the air, flip over backward and grab the frisbee before it touched the ground. After she blew out one of her knees playing frisbee at the park one afternoon, she stopped leaping up to grab them, but she continued to play until just a couple of years ago.

When she finally got too old to race out to get it herself, she’d wait for the younger dogs to run out and retrieve it. When they brought it back to me, she’d run out to them when they were just 10 feet or so away from me, growl at them until they dropped the frisbee, and then she’d pick it up and bring it to me. Not as athletic of a solution — but it kept her playing!

Belle was probably 2 or 3 when this photo was taken.

Belle was our Labrador/Sheltie mix. My wife adopted her from the Animal Humane Society in 1993 when she was just nine weeks old. She lived 16 years and seven months — an amazingly long time for a dog her size. She died on October 24, 2009, surrounded by her family and our other animals.