3/31/08

graham cracker


our beloved orange dog has left this world.
we are for the first time in 15 years dog-less, and this makes our house exceedingly quiet and our hearts heavy.
today, there were no ticking claws or creaking joints. no massive sneezing (graham was a sneezer.) no heavy coated, sweet, musty, dog smell permeating the living room.

graham came into my life with my husband. we were a "blended family". i came with porter and the black cat known as PITA. j came with fuzzy, loving, aloof, stereotypically scary, chow mix. but truthfully, graham dog was the sweetest, face licking, deep barkin' chow dog ever loved.

he made mamas move their kids off the sidewalk when we passed, ("you see mikey, that dog has a black tongue, that means he bites"). we always hated this assumption and took every chance we had to correct this misconception about our loving, gentle, chow chow.

the last few months were hard as graham was alone without his brother dog and spent his days with with our baby cat who is needy enough with humans, let alone a slow moving dog.
she was relentless with him, rubbing herself all over his sleepy self. he put up with much more than he should have.
he didnt seem unhappy, simply worn out. still loving and smiling and panting and grateful.
our lives will be forever changed because we had him in them, and now because we are without his sweet, dog devotion.

rest well graham cracker, chow chow biscuit. i will miss you.

3 comments:

pirate grrl said...

a beautiful tribute...delta (sniff)

Unknown said...

Sorry about the loss of such a beautiful dog. We lost our family dog last year and he is very missed.

Judy Vars said...

Our dog Joy is getting older slower and has joint pain still she seems happy also.Sorry about your friends passing. Dogs do smile don't they.