Misha was the smallest of nine puppies. Nine puppies meant that mom Indy couldn't feed them all at once, so someone was always fighting for a place to eat and getting pushed around. Being the smallest, Misha was usually that one. When Sadie and Jeremy came to look at the puppies, Misha was woken up and taken out to a pen beneath a party tent. It was June, and raining, and cold. Misha was tired and cross, and didn't understand why she had to leave her warm whelping box to shiver in the rain while large strange humans messed with her.
Some of her siblings came with her, those who weren't already claimed by human families. One of those was Faith. Faith came right up to Sadie and Jeremy when they entered the pen. She wagged her tail and looked at them with bright, curious, gentle eyes. While Misha tried to cuddle up with her sisters, Sadie and Jeremy played with Faith. She was everything they'd been told to look for in a puppy: a perfect 10 for temperament, and she was a blue merle like Misha.
They took Misha home in the end, but only after lots of debate about which puppy to keep. Kim would only let them take one (Malcolm came along later, after Sadie and Jeremy had proven they could look after a dog). So they took Misha because she was so tiny and had such a delicate personality. They worried she would not find a good home with anyone else. They had no such reservations about Faith, who was confident and loved everyone.
Faith went home later with a lovely man who lived by himself and needed a dog to love. He named her Ashley and took her everywhere: to work, to the coffee shop in the morning, for runs, for visits with other people and dogs. They were never apart, and Ashley rewarded the man in the way only a border collie can: by entertaining him, loving him, inviting him into games she made up.
The man's job transferred him to Florida a few months before Ashley's (and Misha's) second birthday. He rented a pull-behind trailer, put all his things in it, and hitched it to his Suburban for the drive. Ashley had the back seat to herself, and a wonderful drive with her owner. Life was good.
It happened somewhere in Georgia, on the interstate. A tractor trailer misjudged its distance and hit the rear of the man's trailer. The trailer bounced and twisted. The twisting forced the Suburban out of control and it rolled over at high speed. Upside down in midair, the man looked back and saw Ashley airborne. She was terrified. The Suburban landed on its roof with a crash and all the glass in the windows shattered. The man made a grab for Ashley. His fingers caught a fleeting brush of her sleek merled body, and then she was gone. She ran through the broken window, off the shoulder of the highway, and into the trees.
The Suburban, the trailer, and all the breakable things in it were destroyed. The man lost almost everything. People stopped to help. The man struggled out of his seatbelt, out of the overturned vehicle, and ran after his dog. He searched and called. She didn't come back. The police arrived and the man had to file an accident report and do all the legal things he did not want to do. He called every radio and TV station for fifty miles and begged them to tell his story, and to ask people to watch for Ashley. He went to a hotel and came back to search for his dog every day.
Three days later, a driver on the interstate heard the missing dog broadcast and called the radio station. He had just seen a dog that fit that description on the shoulder of the road, next to a mile marker. He told the station the spot. The station called the man, who got there as fast as he could.
Ashley was lying on the shoulder alone. There was not a mark on her. "It was like she had just lain down and died," said the man. After that, he couldn't say anything else for a long time.
She was Misha's sister, and her name was Ashley. We don't have any photos of her to share, but she was a lovely girl with a sweet and curious nature. We are sad to lose her, and we are so sorry for her owner.
