30/10/2024
Given to me about 1,000 years ago (it seems), by Becky Gonzales, SCO Secretary & friend, under similar circumstances. She hand copied it for me as it was before computers were common place. I've treasured it for almost 30 years. Most of you who know me will relate....
Rest in Peace, Miss Easy Pie
October 27, 2023
Where To Bury a Good Dog
We would say to you that there are various places in which a dog may be buried.
We are thinking now of one dog, whose coat shone in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought.
This dog could be buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry might strew petals on the green lawn of her grave.
Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog.
Beneath such trees, such shrubs, she slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted her head to challenge some strange intruder.
These are good places, in life or in death.
Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.
For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes she leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questioning, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long last.
On a hill where the wind is unrebuked, and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream she knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze.
It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost -- if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.
If you bury her in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, she will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again.
And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they shall not growl at her, nor resent her coming, for she is yours and she belongs there.
People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by her footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog.
Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and that which is well worth the knowing.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of her master.
