Today is National Dog Day. Just as National Donut Day, National Creamsicle Day, and National Lighthouse Day ... it gives ordinary people extraordinary reasons to celebrate ordinary things. I'm sure it all has to do with social media.
But today is National Day Dog. And our dog was anything but ordinary.
39 Days
When we moved into our neighborhood 10 years
ago, my own Dad said we needed a dog. Dogs
and babies make neighbors. He was right. A year and a half later, we had
neighbors.
We had a dog.
Jasper was a clearance sale Beagle. I had to
really sell the Dad on his purchase. I always knew I’d have a Beagle, and his
name would be Jasper. Back then, when I was 26, he was part of The Plan.
Graduate from college. Get married. Buy a house. Get a dog. Have kids. He fit
perfectly into that plan. He fit perfectly into our family.
Born on 3/16, we brought him home to the 316.
Perfect.
He screamed/barked bloody murder all the way
home after we picked him up. 15 miles of freeway, with a howling, braying
11-week old puppy with ridiculous ears caged in the backseat. To his credit,
the Dad just kept driving, hands gripping the steering wheel, silent.
We gave him a miniature green collar and a
tour of his new home. We showed him the linoleum, tile, and hardwooded areas he
was to stay on, period. No carpet. No furniture. No exception.
No chance in hell.
He cried all night, every night. Laundry
room. Garage. Entryway.
He stopped crying when we put his bed right
next to our bed.
He stayed there for nine years.
Acquiring a dog tethered us to something we
needed. It gave us a home. A purpose. A reason to leave Happy Hour. It made the
two of us into a family, and gave us someone else to focus on other than each
other. It was that first integral “thing” we did aside from the mortgage. He
kept shitting on the floor in the brand-new basement; we enrolled him in puppy
school where we spent a month paying too much money for idiots to teach us how
to discourage that very behavior of his. One of his instructors literally
showed us how to tell if our dog was about to poop. It was awful. And
hilarious. It showed us that if it mattered to someone important to us, like
our puppy, we had to do it.
He never ate a single shoe.
He never chewed on a single piece of
furniture.
He did eat my favorite childhood book of all
time, the one my Grandma had gifted me because she had read it to me 5,987
times. The Meanest Mouse & Other Mean
Stories by Janice May Udry. But the Dad salvaged a lot of the cover because
it was my original copy, and found a replacement on eBay.
He was the unPuppy. The unDog.
The vet told us he had 11 days.
He lived, and really lived, for 28 more than
that.
I know he had a few things yet to accomplish.
He needed to live to see the Dad celebrate
another birthday on the 4th of July. He needed to protect his baby
sister from the loud, scary fireworks for one more summer. Because next summer,
when she’s eight, she’ll wholeheartedly welcome them. She won’t need his
protection.
He also needed to taste 40 handfuls of the
fresh raspberries that grow so abundantly right here on his property. We took a
final stroll through the gardens on his last day, and I apologized that the cucumbers and
sugar snap peas weren’t ready for him. He loved those the most. Then he sniffed
out the carrots, and we saw the few he’d been working on, gnawing on the tops
that grow out so barely of the soil.
Who has a garden dog? I mean, I’ve heard of
sheep dogs. Farm dogs.
We had a garden dog.
He was one of a kind.
Through the tears there is so much to be
thankful for. I’m addicted to music, its form of therapy unrivaled when it
comes to so many of life’s toughest lessons. When we loaded Jasper into the
truck bed for his final ride, we laughed through the tears as the Dad’s
favorite song of all time, Small Town
by John Cougar Mellencamp came on the radio.
Well I was born in a small town.
And I can breathe
in a small town.
Gonna die in this
small town.
And that’s
probably where they’ll bury me.
The next song on the final ride soundtrack
was Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust.
That REALLY made us cry. But laugh, too, in
that sick sort of deranged humor you can only experience when you’re on the
edge of something awful.
How do you think I’m going to get along,
Without you when
you’re gone?
You took me for everything that I had,
And kicked me out on my own.
And the trifecta of songs to wrap up our trip
was when we walked out of the vet’s office, each holding an empty leash, an
empty collar and Forever Young by Rod
Stewart.
May the good Lord be with you,
Down every road you roam,
And may sunshine and happiness,
Surround you when you’re far from home.
Each of us have sacred places, and we wanted
to bury Jasper in his, which is the 80 acres where my Dad has built his cabin
in Beaver Township. Beautiful, quiet, and full of sunshine. The most perfect
spot for a forever sleep. I knew the area for his spot nearly exactly in my
mind. The southwest corner of the cabin where we can see him from the window,
and where he can see the driveway, announcing its visitors.
What I didn’t know
however, is how the sun would beat down on him there, surprising even my Dad
who knows that terrain better than he knows most things. One of Jasper’s many
nicknames was Sun Dog- he craved the sunshine endlessly. Or how we had to clear
away so many ferns before we started the internment process. Ferns? Like Where the not-so-red Ferns Grow? Eerie.
But perfect.
So today is National Dog Day.
And I don't have one anymore.
But I did, for nine years.
And an extra 39 days.
And he was the very best.
