Luke Behnke

AKA: "Lukey", "Luke de Luke", "Cool Hand Luke"

We had seven wonderful years with Luke but it wasn’t long enough. We lost him very suddenly to hemangiosarcoma. It was so sudden, so devastating. Our hearts have been completely broken.

When we left Kathy Nixon’s home and brought Luke home with us that day (his name was Heisman then), I had no idea what he and I would eventually go through together. I was pregnant with our daughter Anna and as you can see from the photo, Luke immediately found his purpose when a child came into our family and our home. I called this photo "The Self-Appointed Guardian" and that is what Luke was. We rescued him and he spent the rest of his life watching over us. We still have the scratch marks beside the front door to prove it! No one, and I mean no one, got in this house without Luke’s okay. David and I joked that we should have named him Shadow because whenever you turned around he was there. If I was in the kitchen, he was on the floor in the kitchen. If we were watching TV he was at our feet. He never went to bed until we went to bed. In fact, it’s strange to type this now without his nose under my left hand, nudging me to pet him.

As our kids got older and more active, Luke stayed ever watchful. Once I set up a play tent for the kids in the front yard and they happily crawled inside to play. Luke immediately laid down with his back against the side of the tent. The self-appointed guardian. We live on Mountain Island Lake and enjoy lots of swimming and boating in the summer. Inevitably, when a kid jumped in the water from our dock, Luke would follow in case he needed to "save" somebody. Once he swam halfway across the lake (nearly a half a mile) to get to our boat because he heard our voices! We were very thankful he didn’t get run over by another boat before he got to us.

We recently had some construction work on our house and even our contractor commented that Luke always positioned himself between the workers and the kids. He was always in a place he could keep a watchful eye out on his charges (our kids, Anna and Cade).

He was a sock stealer, but only if you were a visitor in our house. Apparently our family socks weren’t that appealing. But if he could snag one out of a suitcase, that was good stuff. He never chewed them up, just took a single sock to the furthest place in the house from where he found it.

Back in his younger years, he managed to ruin 6 loaves of pumpkin bread in about 30 seconds. I had put the freshly baked loaves on the counter to cool. When I came back into the kitchen, a bite had been taken out of the top of each and every loaf.

Luke was a bed dog. We knew that from the first night he spent with us when we had to get him out of the bed about six times throughout the night. Every night when I got in bed, I would pat the covers and he’d hop up. There was nothing I loved more than those quiet moments I had reading with his head laying across my chest. (He was one of those dogs who was always laying his head on your knee or in your lap. I just loved that about him.) When David would come to bed he’d say, "Okay Luke" and he’d graciously hop down to the floor and curl up on his own bed. Then, as soon as David was out of bed in the morning, Luke took his place. Sometimes when David got up really early, I wouldn’t even realize until I was fully away that the warm body beside me was Luke and not David.

People say that dogs can sense things like fear or sadness or illness and I believe it’s true. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma last year and went through six long months of chemotherapy. After every treatment there were days I simply could not get out of bed until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. More than once Luke stayed on the bed with me until that late in the afternoon even though he hadn’t been out since the night before. My mom came in and called to him, trying to get him to go outside but he looked straight at her and didn’t budge. He wouldn’t get up until I did.

When I told my mom Luke had died she said, "You will never have a more loyal and devoted dog."

We miss him both emotionally and physically. This house isn’t the same without him. It’s too quiet, too clean and there are too many matching sets of socks. I miss the warmth of his breath on my hand, his chin resting on my lap and his happy face always waiting to greet us whenever we walked in the back door.

Even though he is gone too soon, we are thankful that this amazing animal came into our lives and into our hearts. I had the self-appointed guardian photo enlarged and hung it on the wall beside Anna’s bed in her room. I told her now she has a guardian angel who is always looking out for her.