There are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking
now of a setter whose coat was flame in the sunshine and who so far as we
are 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 strews petals on the green lawn of his grave.
Beneath a cherry tree or an apple or any flowering shrub of the garden is
an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees such shrubs he
slept in the drowsy summer or gnawed at a flavorous bone or lifted head to
challenge some strange intruder. These are good places in life or in death.
Yet it is a small matter and it touches sentiment more than anything else.
For if the dog be well remembered if sometimes he leaps through your dreams
actual as in life eyes kindling questing asking laughing begging it
matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last. On a hill where
the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring or beside a stream he knew
in puppyhood or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land where most
exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog and all one to you and
nothing is gained and nothing lost -- if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.
If you bury him in this spot the secret of which you must already have 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 should not growl at him nor resent
his coming for he is yours and he belongs there.
People may scoff at you who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his
footfall who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition people who
may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then for you shall know
something that is hidden from them and which is well worth the knowing.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.
by Ben Hur Lampman
| Ben Hur Lampman |