Dice 1990 (?) to 8-04
You were so very special, no matter how many times I forgot to tell or demonstrate it to you. I guess I just took you for granted, an all too common human frailty. You were my constant companion and friend, through thick and thin, the good and not so good. Before me, you were "best friend" to my mother, who "rescued" you from the Columbia-Greene (NY) Humane Society.
You tried so hard to please the human race, hopefully realizing that sometimes it was not possible.
You were so sensitive it is unbelievable the amount of your love and caring for the humans in your life.
You sensed when, Richard, a friend of mine who's life we did what we both could do to improve, was having a petit mal seizure well before the repeated brain dysfunction became apparent. You did what you could to comfort him and be there for him, going and sitting next to him and then coming to me to beg my help for him when there was none I could give. After all, I was to be your protector as you were mine and that meant caring about those I cared about. I knew without question that if I woke up in the morning and found you asleep outside his bedroom door, he had experienced a rough night from his temporal lobe epilepsy. Even after his spirit had transitioned, you slept outside his bedroom door as if standing guard over a friend who hurt so terribly much on all levels in the end.
I will never forget the day when I was down to Richard's house, packing things in the office as part of the what he had left behind. During that time, you insisted you had to go out. I told you what I good boy you were to come from the other part of the house to get me as I let you out the back door, thinking you had to tend to yourself. As you left intent on your mission and seemingly oblivious to me, I told you to come back on the porch when you were done. After a passage of time, all of a sudden I realized you had been gone too long. I searched and searched, calling and calling with increasing panic about you since your hearing and sight were becoming very poor during that stage of your life. Were you lost? Nowhere could you be found. I went back inside trying to think who I could call to come and help look for you. This friend's house was over and hour's drive from where we lived. Suddenly, I felt compelled to look out the window only to see you slowly trotting in front of the tori gait, obviously exhausted and tongue hanging nearly to the ground. I was so glad to see you when I ran to meet you, I "forgot" to scold you for taking off. In sheer wonder, I realized that you and Richard had been for a run. What a glorious event knowing that Richard was so crippled he could barely walk, sit, stand or lie down from the pain in his lower back his final days in physical form.
When I asked Harold to bury your body out behind the house where you exclusively spent your final days, he told me what a smart and loving dog you were on the few times he was asked to take care of you. You endured much hardship with advancing years, pain from you neck and hip problems as well as pain from the "cocker ears" which sometimes would get ahead of me. You had neurological problems. I was told your so-giving heart was giving out and you were tired from the long journey of about 14 years. The last Winter when I was so sick I could hardly get out the door to walk you, you sometimes had to fend for yourself and remember not to go onto the highway in front of the house without a human to help you cross the 55 mph road inasmuch as you were not to tend to yourself on the front lawn -- even though you had long ago learned that my insisting you not cross on your own as such errors in your judgment would lead to your being in trouble as I feared you would be killed. All this without a complaint or demand on your part.
You never ceased to fit in no matter where we went on my life's journey. Other dogs, cats, etc. and you were accepting of their presence in their home, sharing time and attention with them. You had to go stay with Nancy, a friend of your rescuer's, for a period of time while I was moving from one residence to another. Not a peep and when I would come to visit you, you asked to leave with me and then apparently accepted the "not yet" reply.
As further indication of your awareness, when your rescuer's spirit passed over, you said good bye, barking incessantly about midnight in the apartment building where we lived, until her spirit departed the room with the return to normal air temperature as Mother moved on. As the nursing home pastoral nun who spent much time with Mother on her final day and with us indicated, Mother loved you and came to check on you. You never barked after that.
You had your own issues of abandonment, going back however far no one but you knew, to cope with and did your best. You had been left at the Shelter as a mature companion by someone who believed that to be the solution. My mother had left you to go into the Hospital and finally to a series of nursing homes. After another short stay in another not-so humane society Shelter because the woman who had agreed to look after you didn't care, you came to live with me, having endured the indignities of that particular Shelter.
That last afternoon for you in physical form, I can still see you sitting in front of me with those big brown eyes, asking me in the only way you could to help you. I didn't know what to do. I did the best I knew how, never realizing the decision I would have to make at the veterinarian's later that day. I remember now all the times when your following me so closely that if I turned I was in danger of tripping over you and the times with lack of sensitivity on my part I told you to stop that and go somewhere else. You only wanted what every living being wants, to be close to another who meant so much.
You gave your all in the end. And you, like humans in my life and I in yours, you celebrated with dignity, love and compassion being a fellow-adventurer on the journey to illumination of the soul. Our reciprocal gifts were of friendship in hopefully its most glorious and enduring meaning. This tribute is a wish for happiness, love, peace and all the best that is available to you through eternity. May we meet again at the rainbow bridge and guide me to where you now live, with Richard?
Kat told me the last time we talked that you were now "young" again, free of physical pain that goes with having a physical existence, and sleeping on the end of the couch across from where I was sitting during that phone conversation. You continue to follow me everywhere and especially did you and still do like to follow into the kitchen.
I thank you for coming and spending the last years of your physical existence here with me and being there through so much, making my time here much more bearable. I know that part of each creature and creation which can never die is here still and I'm grateful. There will never be another one like you. That is why on this website you are given credit for being one of my life's greatest teachers. For you surely were and continue to be along with being the treasured life's companion.
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