In the spirit of Facebook status updates having to do with loved ones in heaven -- dear old Dad, dear old Mom, dear old Grandma, dear old Aunt Betty, and Uncle Clarence -- it's time we remembered our dearest friends, our deceased pets.
If you agree, please post this as your Facebook status for the next hour:
It is Deceased Pets Week, honoring the memory of our dearest friends, the pets of childhood and later years. I have the conviction that not one of them is really dead, but all of them are alive and well, waiting for us in Heaven. They were there for us when no one else was. They walked us to school and were the first to welcome us home. They never wanted much, just our love, and that's what they gave us as well. If you have a pet (or more than one) waiting for you in Heaven, post this as your FB status for the next hour. (Pit bull owners, please think it over before you post.)
As for me, I'm thinking back. There's family pictures of me as a baby and toddler and there's dogs and geese in the pictures I don't remember. The dogs we're playing with, holding, being friendly with, so those were good pets even though their names aren't known now. The geese, I'm sure we never named them. Obviously they're all deceased, since one sure thing in life has always been, Animals in black and white pictures are always dead.
The first dog that was really mine was Eggard. He's up in Heaven of course since he died when I was around 5, 6, or 7. I remember burying him about ½ mile from Grandpa's half acre here, and I've thought about him being dust all these years. No box, no nothing, maybe a cloth.
Then there was Poohie, the mother of lots of dogs, a collie. She was the mother of Friskie, who was a great dog of my cousins. They're all in Heaven, probably looking forward to giving us all a great welcome when we get up there. I wish I could remember what they died of, so I could see if modern science could've kept them alive had it been around at the time. Friskie was well known for killing a number of squinnies (ground squirrels).
Dogs were mostly what we had growing up. No cats. Beyond Poohie and her dynasty, there were Peanuts, Bozo, and Spoochie. P and B were beagles and S was a collie. Peanuts was gotten when Grandpa saw him trapped in a culvert. Grandpa went to some real trouble getting Peanuts out of there. It was ironic, all the years that followed, that Peanuts always hated Grandpa and would bark anytime he was around. I told some people that a couple weeks ago and they did what people do these days when you tell them something ironic, they shrugged their shoulders and didn't answer. Truly pearls before swine!
I mentioned Bozo. I had seen an ad in the paper for a beagle that was lost and there was a reward. The ad said the dog answered to the name of Bubbles, so I called for him, "Here, Bubbles!" and he came to me. Then when we called Bubbles' owner, this wasn't him. So we kept him for quite a few years, renaming him Bozo. That seems like it'd be weird. You're a full grown dog and someone switches names on you midstream. But we didn't know his original moniker, and, like the Bubbles thing proved, he answered to anything.
Spoochie. The biggest thing I remember about Spoochie is she got the mange and lost the back half of her hair. So I'm hoping, when I see her come running to greet me in Heaven ... you know, that somehow her back half has grown back or has been magically blinked back into place. A dog's tail sticking up amid an unnatural bald spot is a terrible sight to see.
Other dogs have come and gone. Run over by cars. There's no cure for that. Then there have been some cats, good ones and evil ones. I'm not going to mention them all by name. Then lots of fish, which no one cares about at all. If you're looking to make friends, don't make the mistake of being born a fish. What else? I've never had a pet of my own in a cage, no rabbits, anything like that. We always went rabbit hunting, so the idea of having rabbits as pets to me is ridiculous.
They're all in heaven, my deceased pets. And yours!
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