requiescat in pace: the world's finest shop dog

Understanding & sharing the loss. Fritzi, Hans, Buffy, Caesar, and Raven over the years. Probably gonna keep going through it until we're gone. Right now we've got our "Lindy" girl, 3+ brindle Boxer, who thinks I'm her personal lap.

Must be our kids all inherited the pet love gene though, as we've got assorted dogs. "Rusty", min. Doxie, "Jack" & "Jill", black Labs, "Roman", gorgeous Husky, "Bam-Bam" & "Sassy", Dobes, & "Pugly", Pug, plus some assorted cats.

Condolences from me and my shop buddy Finn. I've buried a lot of friends and squadron mates over the years in peace and war and I've learned to stand stoically beside a coffin and a mourning widow but I know I will be a complete basket case when I lose Finn.

Allen

I tried to say something to that effect that the graveside service. No remains, so we had a symbolic ceremonial funeral pyre where we burned a can of cat food (Bubby's favorite, oh how he loved cat food) and one of his boogity-boos(dog toys) in a bonfire that consumed every scrap and every bit of yard debris, and blazed for three hours. I evidently make a half decent Pagan priest.

My "sermon" was about the trades we sometimes have to make between pleasure and safety. I talked about how, for example, woodworking or riding a bicycle is more dangerous than sitting on the porch, and how we constantly accept a certain level of greater or lesser implied risk to engage in activities we consider more pleasurable than their safer alternatives. True safety is mind numbingly boring, and it doesn't lead to a very enjoyable lifetime, so we trade away some of this security for pleasure. Sometimes it results in dislocated elbows, cut fingers, and sometimes the consequences are fare more dire, as in this instance.

We can take some small solace from the fact that he died doing exactly what he wanted to do, and he died well. His eyes were closed, and his face slack. He didn't have a grizzly, tooth-clenched, open-eyed rictus of death as I have sometimes seen. He never saw it coming, I hope.

Poor, stupid dog. I'm going to miss his hugs.

Not, my friend, when the young one gets hit by a car. :(

That's the bitter part of all of this. I live on a dead end road too. It terminates in a 20' high concrete wall, with a highway up above. There's a fence running the entire length. I had checked the fence many times, because I used to throw baseballs on the wrong side of it, and I was looking for a way over to retrieve them without climbing over the barbed wire. I had so thoroughly convinced myself of the integrity of this fence, that the road above didn't even enter into consideration until one of Mom's friend called to say she thought she had seen my dog on the side of the road on her way to work that morning.

My error was in thinking like a human. Going OVER, not UNDER. That fence isn't worth a damn for keeping dogs off the highway because it intersects with a steep hill, like this

| / | / | / / / /

There are all kinds of places along the bottom where two swipes of a paw are enough to dig out and go right under. This particular hole was big enough for me to go under without getting my pants dirty.

So now I know. I wish I had been able to find out in a less painful way.

Life ain't safe and it ain't pain free. The more you try to make it so the less you actually live.

It's called 'the human condition', I think.

--RC

Profoundly saddened by your loss.

I don't think I have ever read a more touching epitath.

Joe

When I was a young man, early teens maybe, maybe younger, I came home from school to my dog Puschinka. I went out into the backyard to feed her and rough house with her in the snow but she didn't come running. She didn't come when I called. I found her lying on her side underneath the chain link fence where she had been trying to dig to join the dog in the other yard. Her eye was impaled by the bottom strand of the fence.

Reading Bubby's epitaph I was reminded of that winters afternoon and finding the dog I loved dead ... and painfully so.

Still hurts. Some losses just don't heal. They are written on our hearts and we just carry them with us from that moment on. All of life happens and we shuffle that loss off to a quiet corner and lose track of it. Then something happens and we find ourselves face to face with it again.

I am a Jehovah's Witness. I look forward to a day when these losses no longer occur.

Bill

Wow. I'm going to go check the perimeter of the fence at Mom's house ASAP and make sure there are no loose wires. This is a problem I never would have imagined.

I am so sorry to read (hear) about this. Bubby was a real person I believe, and most dogs are not really above the animal level, some do make it there. I guess it has to be a natural occurance to merely chance upon such a relationship, it cannot be sought out and made to happen by will power.

This happened to me when I was 5, on a visit to friends in Oregon, a commune in the mountauins around Portland on which people built yurts and geo. domes to live in. A wonderful and love filled small dog attached to me and played and traveled the forrest all day, after a week we left to come back to Ca. and I never saw him again, but I will never forget him, I will see him in heaven, I hope.

(insert bible verse here, but can't remember what it is)

My mother is quite literate, she reads the best literature ever published and has for most of her life. As I read your post I became impressed with your construction of text (none too crudely stated I hope). So, I copied your text into ms_word, used it's functions to edit and change the font, got it all onto two pages and printed it for her to read and believe me, she was very very impressed. That IS saying something.

Your writing quality is worth publishing, which could become a source for your wife's medical bills and further.

So, thank you for the reminder of some possibilities that happen from humanity, as there isn't much of it in my town, at least not at your level.

forepaws on

Bugger! Sorry to hear of the loss, buddy. Yup, same feeling here towards Ziggy. He's getting a bit long in the tooth now, at nearly 7 years of age. His eyes are starting to cloud and I remember what that means for them. Dunno what I'm gonna do once he goes. I'll probably get another pup and try to forget. I've had 4 dogs in my life, this one is the 5th. What is it that keeps dragging me back to them even though like you, I know it's gonna end in serious pain?

To me, it's the friendship I know will be there. The true kind: unselfish, voluntary, non-stop.

Do yourself a favour: get another pup soon. One you can relate to like Bubby. Takes a while to find one, so get cracking. It will help the healing.

"If one's place in heaven were established by merit and not by priviledge then all dogs would go to heaven." -- Mark Twain