An incident yesterday sent me down memory lane.

I've had Labradors all my life, with the exception of two rescue/adoptee dogs, a tri-coloured Rough Collie called April, and more recently, the beloved Brown Dog, Mira.

April, whom I had as a pet through my teens and early twenties, was a lovable, sweet dog, very prissy and docile, perhaps not overly endowed in brains. Her only encounter with chasing a cat ended with the cat climbing up her face, running along her back, and exiting off her rump before poor April could even wonder what happened.

Mira was initially a very timid, damaged dog, but when she finally did learn to trust us, she developed a character much grander than her size. She had chutzpah like I have never seen.

Labradors are lovely dogs, and while they can be mischievous and silly, and are prone to overexcitement as well as selective deafness, they are also incredibly biddable; indeed, they seem to live by the mantra that they are there to please and love you; that is their mission and they take it relentlessly seriously. They are the epitome of unconditional love and devotion.

Arwen is a monkey, with a playful, talkative, exuberant personality. Soleil is slightly more reserved and mature, and a little more socially awkward, but they are above all good dogs, and they have never been anything remotely resembling defiant.

To this point, yesterday Soleil momentarily forgot herself, as she is sometimes prone to do, and puffed herself up and lunged at the cat for no valid reason, other than because she felt like it. I reprimanded her verbally with one word that I rarely pull out of my arsenal : BAD. Not only did Soleil become immediately contrite, Arwen, who had been nothing more than an innocent bystander, crumpled into a lowered-tail, sad-eyed puddle of upset. Those three simple letters are that potent.

Which brings me back to Mira, who marched to the beat of her own drum. I remember so many interactions with her that basically went this way:

Me: Mira, (insert command verb)

Mira: No

Me: Mi-ra, (repeat command verb)

Mira: Is it the 'N' or the 'O' that you have difficulty with?

Me: Mira, RIGHT NOW

Mira: Eff you.

Me: (goes and gets Mira and walks her through the expected verb action)

Mira: (glowering) Eff you and the horse you rode in on.

I'm smiling as I write this, because even though those frustrating moments happened overandoverandover, it was part of Life with Mira, and I wouldn't have traded it for a second. She was everything that a Labrador is not, and it was as refreshing as it was confounding to navigate the world from that perspective. You never had a true lock on what the outcome would be, not like with a need-to-please Lab. She's been gone now for three and a half years, yet sometimes I think I can hear a bit of Mira's voice echo in Arwen's bark, and Soleil has now taken to doing the manoeuvre we called ''the McClaw'' - that was Mira's trademark move, reaching out with an imperative front paw to haul back the hand that had dared stop scratching her before she was good and satisfied.

The pictures below are just grabs from Facebook, taken 3 years ago almost to the day: Thanksgiving weekend...Mira's last, as it would turn out. Mira hated everything to do with water - rain, puddles, and especially the lake. For whatever reason, on a cool, misty morning down at the marina, Mira fell into the October-cold water off the end of the dock - her worst nightmare I am sure - and had no choice but to swim inelegantly back to shore. The look she gave me when she got land beneath her feet again was priceless.

And that loveable crooked ear.