We buried Darla, our devoted dog, at the back of our yard where the trail into the woods begins. Daily our dog started an adventure there after spinning in excited circles at the question, "Go for a walk?" There are three stones that comprise the gravesite, three small slabs of flagstone which my daughter Betsy, home from Austin, and her best friend, Sarah, painted to commemorate our dog's life.
Darla was the sweetest animal I have ever known. She lived solely to be with us, partly, I suppose, because we let her lick our after-dinner plates. My wife Sue remarked that this loss has hit her the hardest of the losses of our hounds. I think it's because Darla became human, became one of us -- we understood her, and she understood us. She is locked forever in our hearts where she found a home on Day One.
Day One occurred twelve years ago in Onekema when my wife Sue, 17 year-old Betsy, and I followed an ad for Labrador retriever puppies. When we arrived, there was only one pup, eight weeks old, the last of eleven left unclaimed: a big-bellied yellow playing under the owner's mobile home. She was the offspring of the owner's constant companion, a black female, and the father who was in a pen across the yard. He was a muscular and intense fox-red Labrador (also referred to as a yellow), and when I walked up to his small pen, his eyes became crazed, his muscles twitched, and he sprang repeatedly straight up in the air, his paws four feet above the ground, like a canine pogo stick. Our little prospect, meanwhile, was playing with a nearby litter of week-old beagles, chomping them at their necks and tossing them into the air like flipped pancakes.
With her protruded belly, I worried that the little Lab had worms, but the owner assured us that she had just eaten a robust lunch. After negotiating twenty five dollars off the asking price, we headed home to Beulah, when the owner's claim held true. En route, little Darla let fly a massive eruption of mashed corn and, just like that, she lost half her weight and became streamlined.
A squirrel is painted on the top stone of Darla's gravesite. Like most dogs and
all Labradors, she was an avid anti-squirrelist whose mission it was to eradicate said rodents from our yard and the world at large. As we live in Michigan woods with succulent acorns, and dangle bird feeders from our deck, Darla was on constant alert. I kept track of her squirrel conquests over the years as she would bolt out of the back door many times a day in hot pursuit. According to my records, the final tally between the pursued and the pursuer is: Squirrels - 4,361.5, Dog - 0.5. Darla never conquered her adversary. It was only once that I witnessed her catch a squirrel and hold it her mouth. But she seemed so dumbfounded by this actual success that in a second she released the squirrel to its fellows. This explains the .5 credited to each side. These days, squirrels freely run amock in our back yard and seem to carry with them a new-found cockiness. And a new population of skittering chipmunks has suddenly emerged across the yard and under the deck.
The bottom stone renders a landscape painting of the Empire Bluff as viewed from the Lake Michigan beach at the outlet of Otter Creek. Darla loved going there, or to any body of water for that matter. A retriever through and through, she would leap into the water to fetch a thrown stick or a tennis ball that bobbed twenty or thirty yards out. She followed the standard drill of fetching, swimming it back to me, dropping the prize at my feet, and shaking out her coat before waiting for the next launch. She could go on for hours like this. One summer afternoon there, a strong westerly wind drove great breakers into the shore. Darla's game of fetch then became an acrobatic thing. I will always treasure the mental video of this intrepid canine as she crashed through a tsunami and dog paddled through the froth, driven by a mysterious instinct and full devotion to recapture a stick.
During winter walks down our country road, Darla always wanted to play stick on the trek home. She explored the low branches of pine trees, selected an impossibly long branch, and would yank and yank and yank the limb until it gave way. She would then drag the thing over snowbanks, through drifts, and out into the street where she would prance the branch over to me. I would then crack the limb over my knee several times until it was short enough to throw.
The middle stone is painted with the multicolored letters D-A-R-L-A, done up in psychedelic style for a one-of-a-kind personality. Sometimes when getting home from work, Darla would blow her enthusiasm gasket and race in manic circles around the yard like a dog possessed. When anyone came through the door, she would greet them with great squirms of hospitality, then ease between their legs so that they might provide a scratch above the tail. This routine became known as the "butt dance", for as the scratcher scrubbed the butt of the scratchee, Darla would jump in rhythm from foot to foot, twitching and groaning in ecstasy. When I sat in the living room, Darla would sit at my feet and face me, still as the Sphinx, patient as a predator. We provided everything, of course, and she just stood there, for fifteen minutes if need be, waiting and waiting for the next thing to happen, whatever it might be. It was hard to relax under that penetrating stare.
How did dogs become so sweet-natured and affectionate over the millennia of domestication? Of course, there are owners who don't give a dog lick whether their animals love them, so long as they tear the flesh of intruders. But most of us engender and cherish our reciprocal affections so that eye-to-eye and fur-to-skin moments matter most. There was nothing unique about Darla in her canine ways or shenanigans among the masses of people-loving dogs. Like most Labs, Darla, all seventy pounds of her, would gently climb aboard a couch that already seated three large humans, and somehow find a space to rest her head on a shoulder. She was always welcomed because she was so irresistibly sweet.
In August, Betsy planned a visit from Texas, but when she learned that Darla only had days to live, she came early. Darla's lung cancer had depleted her physically and she had no energy for squirrels or long walks. She lost her appetite. But when long-lost Betsy walked through the door, Darla's love adrenalin kicked in, and she spun in excited circles, saturated Betsy's face with her tongue, and went through Betsy's legs for a sustained butt dance, groaning with ecstasy. Betsy was amazed and wondered if our dog was sick at all.
But in a week, Darla met her last day listless and panting. Dog owners know when the time has come -- we just know. At the vet's office, the techs shaved a front lower leg and inserted an IV port for inserting an overdose of anesthetics that would take her life. The three of us -- Sue, Betsy, and I -- were given time alone with Darla in her last minutes. She rested on a large pillow on a deck in a small courtyard outside. We stroked her and rubbed our cheeks on her muzzle wet with our tears. After a long while, the kind veterinarian arrived with the syringe. But in spite of her suffering, lying among our arms and as her final act, Darla gave this stranger a weak wag of her tail.
Darla was the sweetest animal I have ever known. She lived solely to be with us, partly, I suppose, because we let her lick our after-dinner plates. My wife Sue remarked that this loss has hit her the hardest of the losses of our hounds. I think it's because Darla became human, became one of us -- we understood her, and she understood us. She is locked forever in our hearts where she found a home on Day One.
Day One occurred twelve years ago in Onekema when my wife Sue, 17 year-old Betsy, and I followed an ad for Labrador retriever puppies. When we arrived, there was only one pup, eight weeks old, the last of eleven left unclaimed: a big-bellied yellow playing under the owner's mobile home. She was the offspring of the owner's constant companion, a black female, and the father who was in a pen across the yard. He was a muscular and intense fox-red Labrador (also referred to as a yellow), and when I walked up to his small pen, his eyes became crazed, his muscles twitched, and he sprang repeatedly straight up in the air, his paws four feet above the ground, like a canine pogo stick. Our little prospect, meanwhile, was playing with a nearby litter of week-old beagles, chomping them at their necks and tossing them into the air like flipped pancakes.
With her protruded belly, I worried that the little Lab had worms, but the owner assured us that she had just eaten a robust lunch. After negotiating twenty five dollars off the asking price, we headed home to Beulah, when the owner's claim held true. En route, little Darla let fly a massive eruption of mashed corn and, just like that, she lost half her weight and became streamlined.
A squirrel is painted on the top stone of Darla's gravesite. Like most dogs and
all Labradors, she was an avid anti-squirrelist whose mission it was to eradicate said rodents from our yard and the world at large. As we live in Michigan woods with succulent acorns, and dangle bird feeders from our deck, Darla was on constant alert. I kept track of her squirrel conquests over the years as she would bolt out of the back door many times a day in hot pursuit. According to my records, the final tally between the pursued and the pursuer is: Squirrels - 4,361.5, Dog - 0.5. Darla never conquered her adversary. It was only once that I witnessed her catch a squirrel and hold it her mouth. But she seemed so dumbfounded by this actual success that in a second she released the squirrel to its fellows. This explains the .5 credited to each side. These days, squirrels freely run amock in our back yard and seem to carry with them a new-found cockiness. And a new population of skittering chipmunks has suddenly emerged across the yard and under the deck.
The bottom stone renders a landscape painting of the Empire Bluff as viewed from the Lake Michigan beach at the outlet of Otter Creek. Darla loved going there, or to any body of water for that matter. A retriever through and through, she would leap into the water to fetch a thrown stick or a tennis ball that bobbed twenty or thirty yards out. She followed the standard drill of fetching, swimming it back to me, dropping the prize at my feet, and shaking out her coat before waiting for the next launch. She could go on for hours like this. One summer afternoon there, a strong westerly wind drove great breakers into the shore. Darla's game of fetch then became an acrobatic thing. I will always treasure the mental video of this intrepid canine as she crashed through a tsunami and dog paddled through the froth, driven by a mysterious instinct and full devotion to recapture a stick.
During winter walks down our country road, Darla always wanted to play stick on the trek home. She explored the low branches of pine trees, selected an impossibly long branch, and would yank and yank and yank the limb until it gave way. She would then drag the thing over snowbanks, through drifts, and out into the street where she would prance the branch over to me. I would then crack the limb over my knee several times until it was short enough to throw.
The middle stone is painted with the multicolored letters D-A-R-L-A, done up in psychedelic style for a one-of-a-kind personality. Sometimes when getting home from work, Darla would blow her enthusiasm gasket and race in manic circles around the yard like a dog possessed. When anyone came through the door, she would greet them with great squirms of hospitality, then ease between their legs so that they might provide a scratch above the tail. This routine became known as the "butt dance", for as the scratcher scrubbed the butt of the scratchee, Darla would jump in rhythm from foot to foot, twitching and groaning in ecstasy. When I sat in the living room, Darla would sit at my feet and face me, still as the Sphinx, patient as a predator. We provided everything, of course, and she just stood there, for fifteen minutes if need be, waiting and waiting for the next thing to happen, whatever it might be. It was hard to relax under that penetrating stare.
How did dogs become so sweet-natured and affectionate over the millennia of domestication? Of course, there are owners who don't give a dog lick whether their animals love them, so long as they tear the flesh of intruders. But most of us engender and cherish our reciprocal affections so that eye-to-eye and fur-to-skin moments matter most. There was nothing unique about Darla in her canine ways or shenanigans among the masses of people-loving dogs. Like most Labs, Darla, all seventy pounds of her, would gently climb aboard a couch that already seated three large humans, and somehow find a space to rest her head on a shoulder. She was always welcomed because she was so irresistibly sweet.
In August, Betsy planned a visit from Texas, but when she learned that Darla only had days to live, she came early. Darla's lung cancer had depleted her physically and she had no energy for squirrels or long walks. She lost her appetite. But when long-lost Betsy walked through the door, Darla's love adrenalin kicked in, and she spun in excited circles, saturated Betsy's face with her tongue, and went through Betsy's legs for a sustained butt dance, groaning with ecstasy. Betsy was amazed and wondered if our dog was sick at all.
But in a week, Darla met her last day listless and panting. Dog owners know when the time has come -- we just know. At the vet's office, the techs shaved a front lower leg and inserted an IV port for inserting an overdose of anesthetics that would take her life. The three of us -- Sue, Betsy, and I -- were given time alone with Darla in her last minutes. She rested on a large pillow on a deck in a small courtyard outside. We stroked her and rubbed our cheeks on her muzzle wet with our tears. After a long while, the kind veterinarian arrived with the syringe. But in spite of her suffering, lying among our arms and as her final act, Darla gave this stranger a weak wag of her tail.
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