A stranger, a moment and a lasting memory
Woman taps Facebook to find final picture of her beloved dog
She didn’t know it would be their last walk.
Nearby, a stranger with a camera captured the moment — a moment that Laura Tucker will forever cherish.
As the sun dipped behind the city last Tuesday, Tucker took her rambunctious 15-year-old dog on a routine trip to nearby Kew Beach. Brandy, her border collie mix, pranced through the snow as Tucker watched in the biting cold.
“She was the spunkiest, most energetic dog,” Tucker says.
As Brandy frolicked, Tucker struck up a conversation with a man who was out walking a little puffball of a Shih-poo while snapping pictures of the park’s crisp expanse of snow, and downtown’s distant towers bathed in warm orange light.
“I paid special attention because I’m also a photographer,” Tucker says.
Their dogs played. The conversation only lasted a moment. Night began enveloping the city. Tucker walked Brandy back home.
The next morning, Brandy was having trouble walking. She didn’t want to eat. As the day wore on, her condition deteriorated. The normally lively dog became apathetic.
On Friday, Tucker brought her to the vet. The news was bad: Brandy’s pancreatitis had flared up. There was little that could be done to help her. Tucker made the painful decision to put Brandy down.
“I didn’t want her suffering,” Tucker said on Tuesday, choking back tears. “This was far more difficult than I ever could have anticipated.”
In her grief, Tucker remembered that last walk and the man with the camera. On Saturday afternoon, she posted a public note on her Facebook wall — a murmur into the void of the Internet — hoping to have a last glimpse of her beloved dog.
“I am looking for the man who was at Kew Beach on Tuesday at sunset with his dog and camera,” the emotional note read. “That was my last walk on the beach with her. If you happened to take a picture of us walking or playing in the sunset, even if we are just a speck, please contact me. Rest in Peace, Brandy, my sweet spirit.”
When Tucker logged onto Facebook on Monday, she was astounded to see that the post had been shared more than 500 times. Within the reams of comments that it had accumulated, there were three from a man named Ryan Phillips. He posted two photographs. In one of them, Tucker and Brandy stand as small silhouettes in the snow-blanketed park. A last walk in the last light of day.
“My mom had liked and shared it,” Phillips says of the post. “I got a little buzz when I realized it was me.”
Phillips, a lifelong Beacher and a budding photographer, sent Tucker a smattering of photos from that evening. Tucker immediately recognized herself and Brandy.
On Monday night, the two spoke for a second time.
“Grief is difficult,” Phillips, who works as an elementary schoolteacher, said on Tuesday.
“If you can share a little light and a little love, it can really mean a lot to people.”
Tucker, who works as a business leadership coach, plans to hang a print of that last walk in her office.
“I’ll always look at it with a little bit of sadness,” she says. “But it’s also become a symbol of the kindness of strangers . . . It’s turned a devastating day into such a warm and positive one.”