Touching toes and brushing past each other in this life. 
Swimming seas and chasing sticks together in the afterlife.

She might be a dog, but she was so big on life. Never one to hold back, she would sprint towards you at her full 30kg weight when you sees you from afar, like a charging bull. Yes, that was her nickname, Joshi the Bull. She might be a Labrador Retriever, but she could very well be a Toro Bravo, a Spanish fighting bull. That’s how big she is in spirit. 

Big is another word for her appetite. Always hanging about below the table, and lightning quick on any scraps that get accidentally dropped. She’s the in-house vacuum cleaner lol. Always first to finish dinner among the pack. Sometimes even trying to help others with their food! It’s hilarious.

We’d been housemates on some occasions, so I know. When my best friends go on vacation, I help them dog sit, and that’s how we knew each other. I’d never known another animal with so much humanness and personality. Her big black eyes, her knowing look, give that away. She knows what’s going on, what’s you are thinking, and how she can game it to her advantage. How I know? How she always test the boundaries of what she’s allowed to do and not do. It’s sometimes exasperating, but always funny. In her, I understand the companionship pets give to man. Not just a normal day-to-day company to ease a lonesome day, but to man’s loneliness as a species, disconnected from nature and other life.

…we suffer from species loneliness—a desperate hunger for connection with other life, a gnawing fear that we are alone in the universe. Humans, in fact, are more alone than we’ve ever been. We comprise 0.01 percent of all life on earth, yet we have destroyed 83 percent of wild mammals. - Richard Louv

With her, we were never lonely. She might be a dog, but her big life, big spirit, big personality ensured we were never disconnected to life itself. Yesterday, she passed on, after years of battling old age and ill health. But she didn’t go out without a fight. And even at death, she left at her own will, her own time. 

That’s how big on life she was.