A Dog For All Seasons

I lost a friend this week. Bart, the dog, finally decided to leave his people, although he resisted to the bitter end. I’m certain that it was his intense loyalty and concern for his humans that kept him hanging on. Who would be here to watch over us as we went about our daily tasks? Who would keep the errant farmer from self inflicted wounds? Who would herd the stray visitor who absently wandered though the woods without noting a landmark to take a quick pee? He worried a lot about us because we could not smell.

But he was a happy and pleasant creature, who we believed was passing through his last life before Nirvana, and on his way he filled our life and everyone who met him with a sense of calm and joy. He was circumspect with his barking. Most opinions were better left unsaid unless they had a practical purpose. Visitors should be announced with vigorous fanfare. Begging for food elicited a low guttural rumble accompanied by an intense stare that would put the Vulcan mind meld to shame. Mostly, he was silent and observant, and in his youth willing to growl when it suited the purpose of making his opponent release the offending rag.

Bart was a tolerant animal. He accepted most creatures as equals, even cats, in spite of their annoying habit of rubbing up against him and sharing fleas. He was bereft when a young kitten he had befriended in the first few months he was with us succumbed to an automobile tire. He never quite recovered emotionally and was generally aloof towards felines until his later years when Cat Stephens insinuated himself on us one winter evening – but that’s another story.

At the risk of painting him as a sainted canine, it should be noted that he did have a nemesis – or more aptly a pack of nemeses. There is a horde of labradors that live along our road where Becky takes her walk, and one day they viciously attacked him – while he was on a leash no less. How uncouth can you get. He never forgot that incident and every time he heard their mindless braying as their human servant drove them by on his pick up, Bart would bark ferociously, letting them know in no uncertain terms that he was not on a leash now if they chose to make a stand. It occupied his day, until his hearing faded.

In the end, he occupied himself with less strenuous tasks – begging for a piece of salmon skin, sleeping between his humans while they watched something mindless on TV, and writing his memoirs. (He never did find a publisher, so it’s hard to say if anyone will really know the real Bart.) We will miss him sorely, but he came back to us briefly the day after we buried him in the form of a double rainbow over the field where we laid him. We are not superstitious people by nature, but we can’t resit thinking he had something to do with it.