I am thinking now of a
Setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as I am aware,
never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This Setter is buried beneath
a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam. And at its proper season, the
cherry tree strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry
tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub is an excellent place to bury a dog.
Beneath such trees, such
shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavoursome bone, or
lifted his head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places in
life or in death.
Yet, it is a small
matter, for if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your
dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at
all where that dog sleeps.
On a hill where the wind
is unrebuked, and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he new in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture lane where most exhilarating
cattle grazed, is all one to the dog, and all one to you. And nothing is
gained, nothing is lost if memory lives.
But, there is one place
to bury a dog.
If you bury him in this
spot, he will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim
frontiers of death and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again.
And though you call a
dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent his coming,
for he belongs there. People may laugh at you who see no lightest blade of
grass bent by his footfall ... who hear no whimper, people who never really had
a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them,
and which is well worth the knowing.
The one best place to
bury a dog is in the heart of his master.
(Ben Hur Lampman from
the Portland Oregonian Sept. 11, 1925)
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