This just in: dogs make excellent fodder for a newspaper column.
I attribute this to the many lovable qualities they possess, which include but are not limited to their enthusiastic consumption of non-food items such as tree branches and squirrel droppings.
A set of big brown eyes and a wet nose that nudges you off the couch for a well-deserved walk certainly can’t hurt in the inspiration department.
Golden retrievers are especially suited to column writing – as subject matter, I mean, not as actual writers of columns.
(Everyone knows column writing is the sole domain of highly intelligent humans and the occasional team of trained monkeys.)
Our retriever was named Bailey, and her antics appeared several times in this space since she joined our young family eight years ago, adopted from the local pound after running away from people who didn’t want her back.
We’re still scratching our heads over that one.
She was no spring chicken, but had plenty of spunk left in her the day she sprinted from the rear of our station wagon and began sniffing out her new home, possibly in search of tree branches and squirrel droppings.
Like my wife, I’d always had pets around the house as a child, and believed our daughters would benefit from the experience, which they undoubtedly did.
A dog in the house can’t help but bring out the best in people, regardless of whether that dog has just made off with a rack of barbecued ribs or dragged something strange and icky into the living room.
Your tolerance and understanding in these situations will define you as a genuinely compassionate person, even if, just minutes later, you discover the dog has also licked clean one of the children’s cereal bowls when everyone was occupied with that icky thing in the living room.
It is important to note that dog slobber is atomic and impossible to remove from a cereal bowl without a gallon of industrial-grade detergent and a chimney brush.
Still, you love her warts and all.
In recent years age brought severe joint problems that gradually left Bailey struggling to do the things dogs enjoy doing – running free in parks, chasing house flies and rolling in muck of unknown origin.
When, last week, her worsening condition left her unable to walk more than a step or two without collapsing to the ground, we knew the time had come to end the suffering.
The girls would shower her with hugs and kisses before my wife and me carried Bailey to the car for one last trip to the vet, a trip we knew was inevitable but heartbreaking all the same.
Our lives were better because of her and she deserved to be free of the pain, which she now is.
I will miss our walks and I will miss the sound of her slumping loudly on the hardwood floor next to the couch at night, her head raised for the calming stroke of a hand.
We’ll miss everything about her.
Even the atomic slobber.
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