This is my first dog Gizmo and I. I got him when I was eight years old. By the time I moved out of my parents' house, he was blind, deaf and had so many health problems. I didn't want to introduce him to a new environment in his condition.

Due to Cushing's Disease complicated by a heart murmur and hypothyroidism, I will have to send him to the big dog park in the sky on Friday morning.

Gizmo was, hands down, the smartest dog I've ever met. He could say "momma" and "I love my momma" (which I do have on video and will share at a later date), and genuinely seemed to understand and respond to conversation when he could hear. Potty-trained in less than a week, the tidiest dog I've ever met, most tricks self-taught, and an actual understanding of human tone and language, Gizmo was something special. It's hard to talk about him in a way that doesn't make me sound like every other pet owner out there, but he was very different from any other dog I've ever owned.

Gizmo, you will be truly missed.

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Photo taken 2010