Tribute to a Friend

Three weeks ago, we welcomed our daughter to this world. Yesterday, three weeks later, we said goodbye to our family dog of 15 years. There is indeed a time to be born and a time to die.

I was struck once again last night by how unnatural death really is to us; how impossible it seems to invest 15 years in someone, even if that someone is a dog, and then find him/her/it has all of a sudden disappeared from your life.

It may seem ridiculous but Bandit was my friend. We got him when I was 12 years old. I remember the day that we went to look at his litter of pups. He won my dad's and my heart by untying his shoe and kissing him on the cheek. I'm sure he had no idea how much that shoe lace and kiss changed his life. He entered into a family where he was not just a dog. He was a four-legged child and brother.

He joined my mom and I every Saturday morning in the summer for breakfast and garage sales, eagerly snooping through our plastic bags of merchandise to see if we had remembered him in our purchases. He rode almost everywhere we went in the car, either on his pillow or in my lap. And don't think that a car was the only mode of transporation he enjoyed. He loved rides in the boat, on the "green machine", and even perched atop the seat of a jet ski going 5 miles per hour with his ears blowing in the wind.

Every night from the time I was sixteen, he had a ritual of popping about 20 balloons. He would finish his "game" proud of himself for his achievements and anxiously awaiting the treats that would come his way for a job well done. He hated geese and chased them out of our yard many a time, though he was a less than effective foe. He loved walks in the park and loathed brown UPS trucks from the time he was young. He begged at the kitchen table like it was no one's business, unless of course there was a storm or firework going on outside, in which case he was sedated to avoid the exreme panic and hyperventilation that usually accompanied these events. He patiently allowed me to lay next to him and hold him many a time when things were hard in my family and I just needed someone to-literally- cry on, and he would offer a kiss of consolation as his part in cheering me up.

I know in light of 20 million people affected by floods in Pakistan, this seems trivial, but my life was made richer for my four-legged friend and there is grief that accompanies his departure. I will miss grabbing his snout, holding him in the car, and his anxious gallop to greet me when the car arrived in the driveway. It is these little things that I am reminded today to treasure anew because one thing is for sure, 15 years flew by in merely a second.