My Ghost Dog

My little dog Batly died one year ago today. I guess that's what you get for naming a dog "Batly"; french bulldogs are known for their sense of humor. He would dance for snacks, only bit his brother when he deserved it, and patiently endured the infatuation of the confused cat who shared his house. I miss him every day.

If A Dog Be Well Remembered
--- Ben Hur Lampman, the Portland Oregonian Sept. 11, 1925

We are thinking now of a dog, whose coat was flame in the sunshine and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This dog is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the lawn of his 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, he slept in the drowsy summer or gnawed at a flavorous bone or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death.

Yet it is small matter. For if a dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where the dog sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost -- if memory lives.

But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he 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 him, nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth knowing.

The one best place to bury a dog is in the heart of his master.

Comments

[BReid]

Aw, Kippy, that made me all sniffly. It's so bitter sweet.

[Kipling]

I'm pretty sure it applies to cats as well, in which case I've got a pretty good-sized graveyard goin'.

[Kamala]

Aww man, that's so sad. I wish they still wrote things like THAT in the newspaper in these bland modern times.

[Anna Liisa]

Sorry about your beloved Batly...in my case I mourn my kitty Ozzy. Got him as a kitten at the shelter. A year later he died with a huge cancerous tumor intertwining his major organs. He used to come when called, played tug of war like a dog, and slept with us every night. I miss the little critter daily. He died in October about 2 years ago.