A Special Tribute
On December 20, 2005, I lost someone very dear to me. Until now, I haven’t been able to speak of his death and it’s still almost too fresh and painful to write about even today. I remember the first time I saw him and it was love at first sight. He came strutting across a beautiful lush green manicured lawn and decided he loved us as well. We sat there for a few minutes getting acquainted and not long thereafter we took our precious new member of the family home with us. I still remember looking at him in awe, marveling at the beauty of our new yellow puppy and I can still remember his sweet puppy breath. I held him close and with eyes closed enjoyed my first lick of his tongue across my face and giggled, together with my young son, delighted to have this creature join us in our life.
Yes, it was tough at first, as puppies are about as much trouble as a newborn human baby. You have to get up all hours of the night and they need constant attention and supervision. But as with all things, you reap bountifully if you’re willing to put the time and effort into anything.
I’ve had dogs before, but none that ever measured up to K. (For anonymity reasons, I’ll just use his first initial.) It may have been because of his pedigree or it may be that he was just one in a thousand! He came from a long line of champion show dogs. His grandfather was an international champion and was loaned out to the U.S. from England, to forever pass this lineage along and hopefully these bloodlines will never die out. England thank you so much in the role you played in bringing this creature into my life.
He seemed to know that he had royal blood from the very beginning. We didn’t plan on having a dog live inside the house with us. He changed that very quickly. He didn’t bark like most dogs, he used a mournful cry and that sad faced look to get his way. It wasn’t long before we forgot all about our resolve to keep him outside.
As he grew, he learned to open the front door and let himself in anytime he thought we had left him outside too long. It always reminded me of the Flintstone’s scene, where Fred would put the big cat outside every night and somehow Fred would end up outside banging on the door to get in. That has happened a few times to me. K would sit there looking through the glass and I would be trying to find the key to unlock to door.
He absolutely loved food. He would always look in the refrigerator with me as if helping to decide what we would cook. He wasn’t nearly as picky as most people I knew. He was grateful for anything you’d toss his way. There were a few things that he turned his nose up at, but I don’t blame him. He did not like any fat, so if you fixed him a steak, all the fat had to trimmed off. He turned his nose up at road-kill and thought all his many cousins (dogs) were out of their minds for even sniffing at horrible things like that. Come to think of it, he didn’t really consider himself a dog…he was a member of our family.
