Goodbye, Old Friend.

My dog died the other day.

Tuesday morning about 7 a.m., Paxton died in his sleep. He had been sick most of the weekend. Actually, he hadn't been well for the past two months. Heart problems typical of older Great Danes. He'd get sick, would lay down and be unable to get up and seem like he was on Death's door for hours on end. But the next day or a few hours later, he would always rebound and be back to his old self.

This time, he didn't wake up. Eleven years old. That's about three years longer than the usual life-expectancy for a Great Dane. He just didn't want to leave. How's that for loyalty?

He came to live with us four years ago. He was an older dog and came into our home to retire. Seven years old. That's 49 in dog-years. At the time, I was 49 in people-years. We were well-suited for each other. We both liked to just lay around the house, sit in the back-yard and chase the occassional squirrel.

I'd never had my own dog before. And by the end of that first weekend, I was smitten with him. And I was amazed about how, at this particular point in my life, just how easy it was to fall in love again.

I know that he felt the same way. I was his Alpha Male and his best friend. He was my constant companion, choosing to only rarely be out of my sight and going up to bed when I went. He could have stayed downstairs where all the fun and activity was. Instead, he chose to come up and stretch out in his spot on the floor at the side of the bed. Maybe he thought it was his job to be up there to protect me or keep me company. Or maybe he was just sleepy too. Sleeping was one of the things he did best.

Actually, there were a lot of things he did well. To get a treat he could do the three-step process of 'sit', 'shake a paw' and then 'jump' where he would leap into the air for a Milkbone held about six feet off the ground. He knew how to keep squirrels from setting foot in our backyard. He knew how to bark at anyone knocking at the front door, walking down the sidewalk in front of the house (especially if they were walking a dog - somehow he just knew,) or even at passing trains who made the house rumble from two blocks away.

He knew how to sneak into bed. Crouching down, then plopping one foot on the bed, waiting to see if anyone had noticed, then plopping the other up there and then laying low he would wiggle his whole body up. Then he'd flop his head over and look at you like he'd just beaten the heck out of you at checkers. And the funny thing was, that this 120-pound dog actually thought he was pulling something over on you and that you didn't even notice until it was too late.

At supper, he wouldn't beg. He would just stand next to you, stare at your plate, let out the occassional sigh and then plop that huge head down on the table and wait until you were done and those scraps got tossed into his bowl.

That head was the most magnificent thing I've ever seen. If I was a different sort of person, I would have had a taxidermist preserve it for me properly when he died. But I knew they wouldn't be able to capture those soulful eyes. It wouldn't be the same.

T'was a noble head to be sure. Floppy ears, not the cropped Scooby-Doo kind. Next to each of his eyes, a narrow line of short black hair looked like a running tear. As he got older, his grey whiskers gave him the 'Jed Clampett' look that I also favour. A ridge of hair stood up on the back of his neck and ran about ten inches. Where the ridge began, up near his collar, was a swirling of matted short hairs. It was the exact size and shape of a thumbprint. "That's where God put His stamp on him," explained Mavis.

He was one of those Gentle Giants you hear about in the dog world. Never bit anyone even though he could have ripped your throat out if you deserved it. A loud bark but probably too scared to ever do more than that. The patience of a saint.

He taught me that I really do like going for walks along the river first thing in the morning. Even if it is raining and miserably cold. He taught me that you can tell if another dog has been this way and urinated in this particular spot if you sniff hard enough and shove your snout deep enough into the snow. But mostly he taught me how easy it is to love someone without any effort.

As someone else said when eulogizing their own dog - "No, he wasn't the best dog in the world. Only the finest."

The bond between a boy and his dog is one of the strongest and I can't tell you how much I am going to miss that dog.

Goodbye, dear sweet friend. Until we meet again.

... It's going to be Quietsville around here for awhile.