When, Dogs Die

When I was a child, at the end of a large family dinner, before the dishes were cleared, the adults sat back drinking their tea  and recollecting. The children were excused from the table. I liked to stay behind and listen. It was here, sometimes sitting under the table, a place I quite liked, I met the long gone, loved animals and pets  that were part of the family over many, many years.

There are stories of my grandparents pets and even my great grandparents' animals. My great grandmother, Myra Hawley looks so proper and contained in her formal wedding picture from the 1800's. The tales of her girlhood tell another story. Living in the country, she had her own horse. Like Myra, the chestnut horse, Star, was  a beauty. Myra on a whim would jump up onto the the fence, call the horse over and gallop off saddleless, her long skirt and petticoats pulled up well above her knees.

There are stories of the pet rooster, no one would eat; the cat Betty whose ears were chewed off when she was a kitten; the snapping turtle that was put in my grandmother's bathtub; the Easter ducklings given to my sister and my older cousin  they kept until they grew threateningly, big and began biting children. They went off to the farm. There was a rabbit, baby mice found after the hay was mowed, birds that flew into windows, homemade ant farms and more, but it was the dogs that claimed the biggest pieces of so many hearts.

The adults would go over and over the names of the dogs, Prince, Blarney, Kiltie, Margaret, Willie, Gretchen, Lucky and many more. At the mention of one dog's name there would be a roar of laughter or a sad sigh. They knew each name; they knew each story. That didn't keep them from telling the stories over and over again. Bill, a smallish dog, who ate the dough before it had risen. The bread rose inside him and to everyone's surprise lived on without exploding. Prince, a beloved German Shepperd, in the 1920's, was sent to the druggist's on Yonge St. He returned with a brown paper bag that contained a pre-ordered brick of ice cream. Refrigerators, at that time, weren't cold enough to keep icecream frozen. Midge was a little rambunctious dog who lay quietly at the end of the bed of the sick.

So many names and so many stories. Some stories are now well over one hundred years old. The pets live on with the names of the people who loved them.  

I have confidence that Mollie, Penny, Ethel,  P.D., Bandit, Kailie, Finnigan, Winston, Casey, Lexie, Buttons, Zoe,  and many more, my dogs and dogs of my friends, will live on in stories far into the future.