Christopher Orme Nebeker

This blog is dedicated to a special member of our family who recently moved on to the next life. Most of you may ask, "Who is Christopher?" Well, that is his full name, but many of you know him by his nick name "Cru." Our family dog was put down yesterday. It was his time and this has been very emotional for my mom. I want to share a few memories of Crubie.
One day around 7 years ago I was looking in the newspaper and found a litter of Beagle puppies for sale. I quickly called up one of my good friends, Suzi Grant, and asked her if she wanted to come take a look. I had no intention of actually buying a dog that day, but I will never forget the second I saw Cru run in the room with that cute little tail wagging. There was absolutely no way I could resist such an adorable and loving little guy. The next thing I knew, I had just bought a dog and hadn't even mentioned it to my husband!! Surely he would fall in love with it and not be mad at me right?? That night, I picked Dave up from work and said, "Honey, I have something I want to show you!" I pulled a blanket off the box sitting in the back of the car and there was Cru. I think Dave's eyes popped out of their sockets. He was completely blown away that I had bought a dog without any kind of discussion with him. By the way, I did promise that I would never do anything like that again without speaking with him first.......however, Dave did fall in love with Cru pretty quick. (I was still in hot water for a few weeks.)
Dave named him from his ultimate favorite movie growing up, "Rad". A movie about BMX bike racing. The main character who ends up being the champion is named "Christopher", but "Cru" for short. Dave had always told me we were going to name our first son "Cru", but decided we could name our dog it instead. Cru slept in our bed with us, he went on family trips with us, he went snow caving with Dave and curled up in his sleeping bag, we hiked him into our cabin at Alta, he spend many weeks up at Bear Lake in the summers, and within one year, Cru got a girlfriend named "Sadie Lady". Beagles like to be in packs, so we found the perfect companion for him. Cru had a sweet life with us. He owned our house and he owned us. (It is kind of embarrassing how much time and thought we devoted to our dogs. I guess that all changes once you have kids.)
The time came for us to leave to Grenada and we didn't know how we would ever leave Cru and Sadie. My mom kept Cru and my good friend Jane kept Sadie. Cru became a dear friend to my mom. She treated him like a king. Cru was a loving dog with his own cute little personality and character. Thank you mom for giving Cru such a wonderful home. We will all remember him. (I am sorry I can not find a picture to post.) We love you Cru!

This is an Addendum....

I(David) just wanted to say a few stories about Cru as well. Sorry this is past Kristine's post, but it takes me a little longer to come to grips with emotions and things like this than my wife. And in the mean time, I found a few photos of Cru in past online albums(we wish we had all of pictures, but we didn't catch the digital craze until 04 so all of the puppy pictures are in albums in our mother's basement.

Anyway, I have a few wonderful memories of Cru. First, at our old house on Utopia in West SLC. I had to build a fence, having to recieve permission from a truly insane landlord, for Cru. Then, to build a doggy door was impossible because of the layout, so I had to build a ramp from the basment to a window, and then Cru would learn to climb up the ramp and out the window. This was both effective and hilarious. The ramp was only 12in wide, and so for Cru as a little puppy, you can imagine his fear in learning this trick. But he learned quickly, and soon, my memory is filled the sounds of a huge thud and scamper whenever Kristine and I would come home--we knew Cru was coming inside to say high. If we caught him unawares of us coming home, we could go downstair and call for him and then we would watch him fly through this little window, down this wobbly ramp(which I nailed a moldy old piece or carpet to for friction) and that was Cru's greeting to us.

As a side note to that memory, this door also showed us how intelligent Cru was. See, when it was winter, we would have to close the window and he would always just whimper as he sat at the bottom of the ramp and we would go down to open it up. His friends that would come by, we soon learned, were not as intelligent. Once they went up the open ramp, they would soon go up a closed window too, and that's when I learned how to put in new glass quite quickly. I went through many pieces of glass because of neighbor dogs, but not once did Cru get fooled. And fortunately for me, no law suits were filed due to cuts on other dogs' noses.

My second favorite memory is snow camping a few years ago. I took Cru quite a bit, but this time, up in the Uintas, I forgot my sleeping bag. I had brought a wool blanket for Cru to sleep on, but I had nothing. Don't ask me how that happened, snow caving no less. So that night, instead of going home, I tried to tough it out. I had Cru on one side of me, and Saddie on the other, and then I wrapped the wool blanket around the three of us like a burrito. I won't say I got much sleep, but we did make it through the night. Saddie had to get up and check things out a few times, as she always did, but Cru never left my side. I loved my dog. Even after having to give him to Liz for medical school, when I would come home, he would always remember me, he always let me bathe him when no one else could, and he always wanted me to scratch him like no one else did.