Life has been a bit stressful lately, and I find myself looking for strength. We’re trying to do too much at work at once. Things are delayed. At home, we have a 1-year-old and lots of things going on. Juggling commitments and dealing with family events. Insanity was growing.

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This has been a couple weeks coming. It wasn’t that I wanted to put this off, or neglect putting down my thoughts on my friend, I just wanted to be sure I was ready. What good would it be to write out of sadness, or mourning, and forget all the good memories that we shared?

A.J. Joseph was born on March 6, 1999 in Arkansas. Me and Michele adopted him at Petland in Novi on July 4, 1999. We often joked that he was on sale and we bought him with our credit card. We put no thought into getting him. We just knew we wanted a Dachshund. When we walked into the store, I saw just one, and said to Michele “Hurry up and go tell her.”

After that, they put the 3 of us into a caged area to meet, and the rest was history. Me, Michele, and her brother Alex took him home from the mall that day, and later named him A.J. I could tell we had gotten ourselves a cool dog right from the beginning, I just didn’t realize we were adopting a legend.

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