It’s a sad week.

We’ve lost two of our Kaaawa morning dogs.

Here’s the deal. We have eight cats at home. No dog. So we’ve “adopted” many of the dogs we meet along our daily walks to the beach at dawn. Sometimes it takes a dog biscuit to make a close friend. Sometimes just a few pets and “good dog” praise. So we’ve got these relationships with dozens of dogs along our main routes through the neighborhood.

So here’s the sad news.

Ms. Mojo, age 12, passed away quietly at home earlier this week of unknown causes. That’s Mojo on the right in this photo taken last year. Her good buddy, Mr. Puna, is on the left.

Mojo would almost always take the lead, trotting happily across the front yard to greet us and get several little biscuits, with Puna trailing behind at a much slower pace.

Mojo was one of the dogs that got the small dog Milk Bones instead of the big Costco dog biscuits. She learned to count to three, and would return several times until she got to three. Then she would sit down and munch on them.

Here’s the way we’ll remember Ms. Mojo.

We’re really going to miss her. And Mr. Puna, we’re told, is still waiting for her to come home.

And Russell, one of our regular morning dogs until his family moved to the other side of Kaaawa earlier this year, was killed in a traffic accident last Friday while going walkabout through the neighborhood. He was a contender for the homeliest dog award, but wasn’t afraid of the big dogs and followed his own nose.

You’ll find more pictures of both of them in our Morning Dogs’ archive.