Abby was so hyper she rarely laid down, preferring to stand almost always.Abby loved to run and visit her doggie friends. Her desire to be free and explore the world was her undoing, though it was more so my own fault.
Escaped from her yard, a neighbor Linda Stephenson mistakenly thought she was from a house across the street. So she escorted my happy super friendly dog across the street and put her in the gated yard. There she found a bowl filled with antifreeze placed there by a jerk named George who hated raccoons. There in that yard she ingested the antifreeze. The next morning she simply and very abruptly died.
She was a mere four years old and as anyone knows a four year old Lab is still a puppy, full of life and energy.
I'm not angry at the poor soul George whose world is so small that he has to poison the wayward animals that pass unsuspectingly through his yard. He has never known the pure joy that fills your heart when you witness a dog's unbridled enthusiasm for something as simple as a walk around the block.
Abby loved her walks and she loved her pipe. The pipe, a 4 inch PVC 45 degree elbow that was the only thing she couldn't destroy and she carried it everywhere. She even tried to fly with it.
But only God knows why she loved to bark. She barked at everything, at me, at other dogs, at cars, at the golfers who passed by "her" yard. She barked at the wind, the blowing leaves and even barked at her pipe.
Once she appeared on the deck with a low-voltage landscape light and about six feet of wire.The only trouble is we never had any low-voltage landscape lights.
I often joked that if they had a "short bus" for dogs, Abby would be on it.
Despite all of her bad traits, and she had many, she always made me laugh. Perhaps down inside I understood her doggie frustration with the world and its cruelness. Her food dish being just out of reach, to my own goals so close but still unattainable, a passerby that wouldn't give her the time of day, to my being stuck on hold for an hour while waiting for Microsoft tech support. So I laugh even now.
Abby's partner in crime Madison, stopped looking for her after a few weeks, I suspect she understood for Madison was a smart dog. Abby by comparison made Madison look brilliant. She knew Madison was the smart dog and she would follow Madison everywhere.
Even with all of the noise and destruction, I couldn't ever raise my voice at Abby and perhaps it was her eyes. She always wanted to please so badly and the look in her eyes said “I trust you”. Even if she escaped the yard, when I found her she would simply look up at me, sit down and then walk beside me, back to her home. No leash required.
I'll forever remember the way she looked at me when suddenly she became very sick, as if she knew I would be able to save her. Her eyes told me that she was hurting and that she was really afraid. I told her to lie down and that we'd go to the vet, but it was too late. I patted her head and told her softly that it was ok, and that she was a good dog as she took her last struggling breath.
She died next to her pipe on the sunny deck where she loved to bark at the wind. The leaves swirled around us and raced towards the sky. Her doggie spirit was finally free to explore and chase her dreams, forever a rainbow in my heart.
And now that she is gone and I amazed at how quiet and sad my home has suddenly become. Madison rarely barks, it was a job she always left up to Abby, and it's taken me a week to stop hearing her woo woo wooo at the wind. But her bark still echoes in my mind.
Now Madison sits alone on the edge of the deck with an empty space next to her where Abby used to stand and it's just so quiet.
But rainbows go on forever and
I know a Chocolate Lab who can fly.....
I often joked that if they had a "short bus" for dogs, Abby would be on it.
Despite all of her bad traits, and she had many, she always made me laugh. Perhaps down inside I understood her doggie frustration with the world and its cruelness. Her food dish being just out of reach, to my own goals so close but still unattainable, a passerby that wouldn't give her the time of day, to my being stuck on hold for an hour while waiting for Microsoft tech support. So I laugh even now.
Abby's partner in crime Madison, stopped looking for her after a few weeks, I suspect she understood for Madison was a smart dog. Abby by comparison made Madison look brilliant. She knew Madison was the smart dog and she would follow Madison everywhere.
Even with all of the noise and destruction, I couldn't ever raise my voice at Abby and perhaps it was her eyes. She always wanted to please so badly and the look in her eyes said “I trust you”. Even if she escaped the yard, when I found her she would simply look up at me, sit down and then walk beside me, back to her home. No leash required.
I'll forever remember the way she looked at me when suddenly she became very sick, as if she knew I would be able to save her. Her eyes told me that she was hurting and that she was really afraid. I told her to lie down and that we'd go to the vet, but it was too late. I patted her head and told her softly that it was ok, and that she was a good dog as she took her last struggling breath.
She died next to her pipe on the sunny deck where she loved to bark at the wind. The leaves swirled around us and raced towards the sky. Her doggie spirit was finally free to explore and chase her dreams, forever a rainbow in my heart.
And now that she is gone and I amazed at how quiet and sad my home has suddenly become. Madison rarely barks, it was a job she always left up to Abby, and it's taken me a week to stop hearing her woo woo wooo at the wind. But her bark still echoes in my mind.
Now Madison sits alone on the edge of the deck with an empty space next to her where Abby used to stand and it's just so quiet.
But rainbows go on forever and
I know a Chocolate Lab who can fly.....
It's been a dozen years and I still miss Abby.
3 comments:
I, too, had an asshole neighbor named George. We moved into our second house after the birth of our first child. This neighborhood was the next step up from the starter house. Two stories, with bigger yards. With that 4th bedroom, this was the next stop after rolling the dice in the Game of Life. With that extra bedroom, people with an older child moved in when they had their second. Of course, that older child would soon be driving, and the neighborhood was still one of those big brand builders, where they cut down every tree within 10 miles and then plant a stick and called it a tree.
The neighborhood was one long, straight street, with a couple of short side road dead ends where the landscape allowed more than one house wide. Of course a long straightaway and some kid with a new car and a driver license still smelling of the new plastic spell trouble for pedestrians, kids, and dogs in their own yards. So smaller children learned to ride their starter bikes on the wide sidewalk, and not in the road. While not completely legal to ride on a sidewalk, no one cared. No one except George.
George moved in just after we did, but none of the neighbors got to know him. He was unmarried, possibly divorced but no one really knew, and he kept to himself. He kept a nice yard, and was seen working on his car in his garage from time to time. But George had appointed himself the sidewalk police, and would run up and scream at kids, some 4 or 5 year olds, for not wanting to get run over in the street by some sixteen year old with a new Camero, wanting to see what it could do on a neighborhood street instead on some old backwood road, like civilized people did when they were young. George was know to be nasty to moms pushing a stroller with a 3 year old on a tricycle in tow.
This went on for almost 3 years, until one weekend day when he made the fatal mistake of yelling at my kid, who was across the street in his own driveway, learning how to bike with training wheels on, and his old man rotating tires on his Grand Cherokee, because he didn't want to pay the $8 bucks at the tire shop. With tire iron in hand, he walked to the middle of the road and let George know that he was going to stop that day from harassing kids in the neighborhood. He said his piece, words were exchanged, and he went in his front door, slamming it behind him.
About 2 weeks later I got a call from another neighbor stating there had been a bad wreck at the front of the neighborhood, someone had careened off the road and hit the neighborhood sign and planter box. I had been volunteering to clean that sign and plant new flowers, that I paid my own money for, as we had no HOA. I asked him what kind of car, he told me and old Red Ford Mustang. I quickly packed up a small bag of tools and other thing and walked the 8 house lengths up to the entrance, and there stood George, his Mustang on 3 wheels, the 4th up on the second level of the planter. I asked him if he was OK and what happened. It was late, maybe 10:30 or 11. He said a deer herd ran out in front of him and he swerved, hitting a wet spot that the builder never fixed, and hot the wall. I pulled out a flask out of the tool bag and asked if he wanted a drink to calm him down, he did and took a deep shot. I told George I had wench on the Jeep and would pull him out, give me a few minutes to put in on and I would come get him.
I went home and call the Union County Sheriff and told them a know drunk driver was in an accident. They had the car towed, his insurance paid $3800 to repair the neighborhood sign, and he put his house on the market the next month. I hear he spent over a week in jail as no one would bail him out, he lost his job. Soon the neighborhood voted to create an HOA, and their first act was to install speed bump down the main road.
That house was not that well built, but I loved it, the yard, the way the fence went just past the house so the dogs could see into the front yard. The day the dogs chased soap bubble from a machine, making the baby laugh. The wife talked me into moving on to another house. We would sell that one 2 years later in the divorce. Now the kids are grown and I have the house in the neighborhood with kids. I draw race starter lines on my sidewalks, to the dismay of my HOA. George, if you are still living, fuck you.
Any good pay raises forthcoming? Otherwise I might have to send out some sextortion tapes. What have we succumb to? Is this the best we have to offer the public? When the blacks say they don’t trust the police…. I see what they mean now
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