HockeyBuzz will take today to honor and remember one of our own. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ek and his family.

--the Hockeybuzz staff

11:00pm ET.

From Ek...

I just wanted to sincerely and truthfully thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I have read almost every comment in this thread to my wife and kids throughout the day. I think this was the hardest thing I personally have ever had to endure.

Burt was in pain last night. My wife and I slept on the floor with him and he was looking at us like "help me." He was such a tough little guy. He never backed down from the biggest dog we would come across and NEVER showed any signs of pain while fighting cancer over the last eight months. Last night we saw in his eyes that he wanted this all to end.

Telling our 7 and 4 year olds was brutal today. We made sure they said goodbye before they headed to camp this morning. My wife and I played ball with him this morning actually. He grabbed a tennis ball on the way out of the house! Halfway down the walk he couldn't even walk. But he still laid down and batted the ball around.

At the vet he peacefully fell asleep with us holding him and balling our eyes out. He was doing what he always did when we were down. Trying to lick our hands. Even at the end he was trying to comfort us. As great as Burt was at picking hockey games his true talent, like all good dogs everywhere, was his ability to see when we were down and come over to us and comfort us.

That is why this whole thing hurts so badly. He was the best and was always there for us and in the end the only thing we could do was let him go.

My wife and I left the vet at 10 am and didn't know what to do with ourselves we were so upset. We sat in the car and I opened up this thread and it honestly was the kindness from all of you and especially some of the heartfelt stuff in the early pages that got us through that hour.

Oh and another thing. Burt ABSOLUTELY Loved doing the videos on Hockeybuzz. All I had to do was grab the mini net and say come on Burt and he would race right to the spot where we shot the videos. So thank you for watching the videos as well.

So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart everyone. The power that you folks had as a group on my family today was palpable. God bless all of you.

Ek

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