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His nickname was “Lucky Dog,” which he acquired as a puppy in the village of Minto after my wife, Kristan, rescued him back in 1995.

Kristan has never met a puppy she didn’t fall in love with, and the roly-poly chocolate Lab, only six weeks old, stole her heart.

When one of the villagers encouraged Kristan to take the puppy home, she was reluctant. We had 25 sled dogs at home, and I had given her firm instructions before leaving for Minto not to return with more dogs.

But when Kristan asked the person what would happen to the little chocolate Lab if she didn’t take it home and was told the dogs would probably wind up in the dump, well, you can probably see where this story is going.

That’s when he earned his nickname, as in he was a “lucky dog.”

In the end, though, we were the lucky ones.

We named the puppy Lige, in honor of Minto elder Lige Charlie, who has since passed away, but we still referred to him as “Lucky Dog” on a regular basis.

Even though he was 14 1/2, his death last weekend came as a surprise. We were just getting ready to hop on a plane in Chicago for the flight back to Fairbanks after a 10-day stay in the Lower 48 when we got the news that Lige had died.

He stopped eating, which he sometimes does when we’re gone, and evidently hadn’t been feeling well, but his death still came as a shock. Although he was showing signs of his age, Lige seemed to be a pretty healthy dog.

The fact that we weren’t there when he died and didn’t get a chance to say good-bye is something we will always regret.

Needless to say, the flight home was a depressing one.

As my teary-eyed, 10-year-old son, Logan, said on the plane ride home after Kristan broke the bad news to him, “Life isn’t going to be the same without Lige.”

No, it isn’t.

Lige wasn’t a dog; he just looked like one. He seemed more human than canine. He was so in tune with Kristan and me that he knew when we were mad or sad and reacted accordingly, slinking off to hide if Kristan and I were arguing or walking up to lick our hands if we were sad.

We always joked that Lige was our first son. For the first 9 1/2 years — until we got our second dog — we took him everywhere we went — hiking, camping, mushing, fishing, running, skijoring, berry picking.

Lige hiked to the top of Donnelly Dome with us, went dip netting with us at Chitina and went halibut fishing with us on a boat in Prince William Sound, the latter two of which were probably not good ideas. But Lige went wherever we did back in those days.

Lige hated getting left behind, even if it meant being cooped up in a car all day. He’d sit in the car every day during the winter, waiting for me to come out and drive to Slaterville Park so he could trot around, sniffing and peeing on things. I’d bring him to work in the summer, too, when it was cool enough and take him swimming in the Chena River. He kept my seat warm in the winter and wet in the summer.

Lige was friendly. So friendly, in fact, that someone once stole the stereo out of our truck with Lige sitting in the cab. I can imagine Lige licking the thief’s face as he or she ripped the stereo from the dash. Even people who don’t like dogs liked Lige.

Lige wasn’t shy. He approached everyone with a wagging tail and that big, happy Lab smile, which he usually stuck right between your legs, whether you knew him or not. We never had to worry about Lige scaring anyone.

It took him awhile to learn — probably because of the trauma involved in falling out of two canoes while he was a puppy — but Lige loved to swim.

He was 1 1/2 before he finally took to the water.

We were fly fishing on the upper Chena River and waded across a small pond in our chest waders.

The only way Lige could stay with us was to swim, so he swam.

After that, we couldn’t keep him out of the water. He loved to chase beavers in the pond down at Two Rivers Lodge and fetch sticks in the Chena River at Graehl Landing. He never met a mud puddle that he didn’t want to lie down in, which he almost always did.

One of the last trips we took him on this summer was a camping trip on the Chena River in early August. He wasn’t thrilled about getting in the raft — Lige wasn’t big on boats — but he tolerated it because it meant going instead of staying.

Our float trip coincided with the peak of spawning for king salmon in the upper Chena and as it turned out, we set up camp on a gravel bar next to a deep hole where kings were congregating. Lige sat at the edge of the river, watching the big, red fish splashing and jumping almost the entire two days we were there. Whenever he saw a fish, he would swim out and search for it, doing circles in the river as he tried to figure out where it went. It was classic Lige.

We buried Lige on Sunday, the day we got home. I dug a hole in the backyard, we laid him on his favorite dog bed, draped an afghan over him and said a tearful good-bye.

Life hasn’t been the same since, and it never will be again.

Good-bye, Lucky Dog.

We’ll miss you.