One thing that every dog owner knows and carries in his brain every day of his life-like stone is the knowledge that one day his precious dog will die.
But somehow we are willing to take on that burden just for the temporary pleasure of sharing the love and joy of having a dog.
My cocker spaniel “Dandy” passed away this month on his 13th birthday. Odd, how I feel he is still with me.
I have heard that when one suffers the loss of a limb, one has the sensation that the limb is still there. That describes how I feel about the loss of Dandy. I know he is gone, but I still feel his presence every minute of the day.
He is curled up on his bed in the corner of my office and watching me as I type stories. He is sitting by my chair in the kitchen while I eat breakfast occasionally receiving a forkful of scrambled eggs from my plate or a piece of bacon.
He is behind my chair as I chat with Chip in the gallery or the front room. He follows me throughout the house, like a shadow, and never takes his eyes off me.
Of all my dogs, and I’ve been blessed with many in my lifetime, mostly golden retrievers, one German shepherd, several English springers, Dandy was my first cocker spaniel — each dog, each breed, leaving precious memories, each a dear companion and soul mate to me, yet Dandy was the sweetest dog of all.
Dandy loved all cats and dogs, even those that spat, snarled or growled at him. He would step aside if a beetle was on the road so as not to trample him. Now that’s a sweet dog!
I have loved dogs all my life, starting with my first dog, “Timmy,” a part spaniel, when I was a child growing up in Vermilion, Ohio. Can anyone forget their first dog?
He followed me through the cornfields and up and down the wild beaches of Lake Erie where I roamed in the ’40s playing out adventures. He often smelled of dead fish as his favorite pastime was eating a bass or sheepshead washed up on the beach and then chasing after me for a hug.
Mother tried her best to hide his death from me, she was of the ilk that lied to children in order to shield them from grief, (to the point I was not even allowed to go to any funeral), meaning well of course. I finally realized after many weeks that Timmy, who was “sick and at the vet’s,” was not coming back. I recall shrieking in rage like a sudden summer squall blowing in from across the lake in Canada at the realization that Timmy was dead. How could Mother lie to me?
I was at the home of a cocker spaniel breeder looking for a puppy but fell in love at first sight with a tri-colored cocker who stared out at me from a small cage. “He is not a puppy and he is not for sale” the breeder said, steering me back to her brood of all beige and all black puppies.
But I kept looking back at the caged dog. “How much for that dog?” I asked and was again told he was not for sale, he was a year old and that she had just purchased him from Yoder Farms in Newport News to be a stud dog to introduce tri-colored spaniels to her next litter of pups.
The dog stared back at me with the saddest eyes as if to say he didn’t like the fate that had been planned for him nor his caged life. His despondent look did it. I told the woman it was that dog or no dog and she finally agreed to sell him to me.
On the way home I held his trembling body close assuring him he was never going to see a cage again. But before we could get him into the house he jumped out of my arms and hid somewhere in our fenced-in backyard. There was no use trying to find a black dog in the dark, but we retrieved him the next morning for breakfast.
Barely a week had passed when Dandy on a walk along Kent Street bolted at the sudden sight of a woman coming out of Waterman’s Park and ran off dragging his extended leash behind him. He was running so fast I could not catch him. He disappeared around the bend. The sound of the plastic handle bouncing on the road behind him only made him run faster.
We put a notice of his loss in the Sentinel and the dog lovers in Urbanna turned out to help look for Dandy. But there was no sign of him. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air.
Eight days later neighbor Barbara Shackelford knocked on my door. She heard a crying in the marsh behind her house. Chip and I raced out the door and ran to the marshes on Obert Street calling his name and plunging through the marshes.
“I see the end of the leash!” Chip shouted. He followed it as it coiled around shrubs, prickers and marsh grass. There was Dandy, trembling in fear at the end of the leash. He was still alive!
I picked him up in my arms and sobbing, I ran back to the house. I don’t know how I had the energy to run so far. I gave him water, then called Hartfield Animal hospital. The office was closed but I left a message. Dr. Skinner called me back within minutes. “Give him a little milk, rice and chopped chicken but go easy on food for a while,” he said.
That Dandy had survived so long without food and water seemed a miracle. Heavy rain during that week must have provided him with enough water. He recovered quickly.
From that point on he never let me out of his sight, unless, of course I left him, and he waited faithfully for my return at the front gate, tail a wagging.
Dr. Goldsmith took good care of him in his last years. When he became infirm, she found a heart medicine that kept him going for another year. We were so grateful for her advice and good care.
We feel fortunate to have had Dandy these past 12 years. Meanwhile, I still feel his presence, in his bed next to the sofa, near my desk where I write, at the dinner table and always by my side. Like a shadow, a furry angel, Dandy is still there, watching over me.
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