“Dogs die. But dogs live, too. Right up until they die, they live. They live brave, beautiful lives. They protect their families. And love us. And make our lives a little brighter. And they don’t waste time being afraid of tomorrow.” – Dan Gemeinhart
I’ve had to wait a while to write this post about losing one of my grand dogs. I was too sad when I thought about sweet Reba. Not long ago she escaped her backyard fence several hours after dark. She was missed almost right away. Her family lives on a dead end street with hardly any traffic. On one side of that are more neighborhoods with houses and no fast traffic, but unfortunately, in the other direction, not far as the crow flies or as a curious little dog might chase a scent of who knows what there is a through road with much traffic. Sadly, that is the way she went. A black dog perhaps with her nose to the ground being an instinctive hunter in the dark night. The driver probably never saw her. My son found her after the family discovered her missing and went out calling and searching. A terrible moment for him and a sad time for all the family as they took her to my daughter-in-law’s parent’s farm and buried her near midnight. Tears in the night for all of them because they all loved their energetic and lovable Reba.
Reba was my granddaughter’s dog. She found her online and got her while she was still a pup. It was anybody’s guess exactly the different varieties that made up Reba. She was long with short legs like a basset hound and very big paws. She had a head that might make you think labrador. She had a hound’s bark and nose. And she loved the girls who welcomed her into their lives. I often kept Reba when her family was vacationing and then last summer when they were in the process of selling their house and then painting and replacing the flooring in their new place. So I probably had her and her big buddy, Waylon, for two or three months at various times last year. She loved to sleep in my wicker chair or as close as she could get to Waylon.
When I first kept them, I had Oscar. Oscar was the best dog in the world but he wasn’t crazy about sharing his space with other dogs. He tolerated it when Waylon and Reba came to visit, but you could almost see him sighing with relief when they went home. Reba didn’t let that bother her. She just assumed he liked her the same as everybody else did. Not a bad attitude to have.
She loved to go walking with Oscar and me, and then later Frankie and me. Waylon was happy to stay at the house. Walking a mile or two was not on his list of things to do each day. But Reba was ready to go. I took her a few times without a leash, but then one day she started sniffing down in one of the holes that sometimes appear in our fields and I think what if she pushed herself all the way into an underground opening and I couldn’t get her out. Poor dog had to have leashes after that imagined disaster. But I had a long leash and she still had fun on our walks.
She was a dog that lived her life to the fullest with a joyful abandon. We cried when she was gone. We miss her. But one thing sure, we’ll never foget our odd mixture of breeds mutt with the heart as big as she was.
And so my granddaughters can perhaps think of this quote from an unknown source. “You’ve lost a dog but gained a guardian angel.”
“Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you’re going to lose a dog, and there’s going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can’t support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always aware that it comes with an unbearable price.” – Dean Koontz
Thanks for reading. Have you ever lost a dog or special pet you loved?