Puppy Dogs

Booger!

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

“Boogerrrrr!” – Dr. Johnny Fever, WKRP in Cincinatti

“Bet he’s a booger, ain’t he!” I don’t think the older man at the garbage dump meant it the same way Dr. Johnny Fever did…a dried up, nasal mucus discharge everyone suffers from, yet saying it on air got the good Doctor of Discology fired, landing him at WKRP.

The older man was eyeing my new addition, Sir Quigley Apples…okay Apples for short…for now. Strange name for a puppy dog. Blame whomever rescued him for the name Apples and my bride for adding Sir Quigley…okay, I might have been at fault. I wanted to change his name to Quigley.

To complicate his issues, Quigley is the first male puppy we’ve had in over thirty years, and we call him “she” more than we call him, “he.” We have decided he will identify as gender neutral…he has been “fixed” anyway. Think about that, men. To be “fixed”, men must undergo a certain procedure.

The elder gentleman in the beat-up black pickup turned to the other elder gentleman in a black beat-up pickup truck and exclaimed, “What an interesting looking puppy. What is he, bet he’s a booger, ain’t he?”

Quigley is interesting…and a booger. A blue Merle, “mostly” Australian Cattle Dog, who is a tripaw.  A rescue, he was found on the side of the road with a crushed front paw. With a crease on his head and the other scars on his one-year-old body, I’m sure poor Quigley was hit by a car and left to die.

Sir Quigley Apples was found too late to save the paw or the leg it was attached to. Being “mostly” an Australian Blue Heeler, it seemed appropriate to add Quigley to his name. Quigley was the title character in the movie “Quigley Down Under” set in Australia. The character played by Tom Selleck was stalwart and tough…a bit of a booger, so is Quigley Apples. Now if I can find a female to go with him, I’ll name her “Crazy Cora.”

See the source image
Matthew Quigley and “Crazy Cora”- Pinterest

I’d say “my” Quigley is adjusting well. He is laying in his chair with three feet in the air mocking a dead cockroach and snoring contentedly. That would be the chair that used to be mine. Learning to “sit boy, sit” and chase squirrels can be exhausting. I’m thinking about taking a nap myself. We have a little work to do on our schedules but I’m sure I’ll be trained soon. As I write this, he has been in our care less than four days.

Don’t mind me, I’m chillin’ in my forever home

It has been a long time since I heard the word “Booger” used in the old gentleman’s context. I used to hear it all the time back home. Now I rarely hear it unless Booger McFarland, the football player turned analyst is reporting on TV. Booger was certainly a booger on the playing field.

Up here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge there was Booger Pruitt…from my limited time around him I’d say he got his nickname honestly. “He was sho nuf a booger, God rest his soul.” You wouldn’t know him probably and he was one of those good ole boys who ended his life right after saying the immortal words, “Hey Y’all, watch this.” Guaranteed, it had something to do with unaged and illegal libations.

No, the context was booger as in bogyman, devil, monster, haint, or goblin. I was introduced to “booger” at an early age, “Boy, you better stay in that bed. If’fin you don’t a booger might git ya.” During those days I don’t think I knew exactly what a booger was. I knew I didn’t want to git got and was quick to look down and search before I got out of bed.

Moooooom! Come quick! It’s a dust bunny!

I’m guessing the word comes from my forefathers. At least part of my DNA comes from the Scot Irish that came to Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s and then trekked through the Appalachians. Booger has an Appalachian ring to it like haint has a Geechee-Gullah ring.

Maybe not. As I look for its origins it seems more English and a derivative of Bugger or Boogie and kissin’ cousins to a bugbear or bugaboo. All are sorta defined as imaginary beings invoked to frighten children, typically a sort of hobgoblin supposed to devour them. “Don’t get out of that bed, that bugaboo gonna eat cha!” Actually, Booger sounds better.

I researched the origin of the other booger. I didn’t dig deeply enough and failed to extract its origin.

Facts you didn’t want to know. Forty-Four percent of people questioned admitted to dining on their own boogers. I believe fifty-six percent lied. Dried mucus could be beneficial for the immune system according to some booger-eating lung specialists.

“The Booger under the bed” or its close cousin, “The Boogieman under the bed,” makes me wonder. As scarry as the world is in real life, why do we terrify our children with make believe. Hummmm…I reckon booger is better than, “You better stay in that bed. If you don’t the serial killing pedophile in the closet will get you.”

As I think about it, we’ve created a new class of boogers to scare our children with. Those we see as “others”. Those who don’t act, talk, worship, love, or look the way our opinion dictates they should. Again, don’t we have enough real Boogers? Do we need to create more?

I grew up in a time when it was safe to leave your doors unlocked and a quarter mile walk down Highway 521 to Pettus’ Store was a daily affair for an eight- or nine-year-old with no thoughts of “Boogers” to beware of. Those would come later. It seems as one reaches adulthood the “Boogers” multiply and aren’t found under your bed.

I’ll stick with my little wide-open Booger. A loss of a leg does not slow him down. I’ll just have to work on our schedules…I’m more likely to change. I’m also determined to teach a three-legged puppy to shake without falling on his nose causing a mucus discharge, “Booger!”

Doctor Johnny Fever says Booger

To peruse other choices by Don Miller, go to https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR37yN-pI3qP_wTywID-wjTYgGazQNc2W10OrrXURozxPBImd8LQ_8vzhyU

To Puppy or Not to Puppy, that is the Question!

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

“I wish I lived in [a]world, where it’s sunshine and puppies all the time.”
― Charlotte Huang, Going Geek

I fear the question is not “to puppy or not to puppy.” More likely it is, “Will there be one, two, or three puppies?” We are going to visit puppies today.

My bride and I have been surrounded by animals during our near forty years together…except for the previous two years. The pain of losing our darlings of fifteen years, Maddie, and Tilly, has been too much. We’ve mentioned inviting a fur baby into our lives and then listed a litany of reasons why we shouldn’t. That may be ending…maybe.

A friend of mine thinks we need a puppy and continues to send links to local shelters. I love her and hope she continues but I’ve been able to avoid the cuties until early last week. Three sisters, little balls of fur, big ears, and sad faces. “Come on old man, come get us!” We are supposed to ‘visit’ today.

Maddie and Tilly were Cattle Dogs, Blue Heelers. These are Heeler mixes and I’m in love. I just wonder. Heelers are high energy and I fear my tanks are running dry.

Tilly and Maddie waiting patiently for a checkup

Puppies, Bubba, Brodie, Bogie, Sassy Marie, Jackson, Maddie, and Tilly, short for Madeline Roo and Matilda Sue. Kitties Minnie Muffin and Santana. A myriad of goats with N-names beginning with the first, Nannie. Bunnies with B-names, the first, a gift for my wife named Buster. A one-legged rooster named Boomer. Their graves surround our home reminding us of love and commitment.

These don’t include the wild animals that grace our homestead in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. All are welcomed and make our lives richer…even the bear that occasionally tears down my fence and steals my trash.

I’m reminded of the possum gifts Maddie and Tilly would bring us. To my knowledge not one was injured or died. They really do play possum, especially the one that tired of “playing” and got loose in the dining room.

Questions lead to more questions and will lead to decisions. One, two, or three? Do we need a puppy…or three? Do we have the energy to deal with a new puppy…or three? Will we outlive our puppy…or puppies? If they are as long lived as our last three, I’ll be eighty-seven. Does that puppy, or do those puppies, need us? Is it that I just want a puppy? Am I overthinking it all?

Henley

My bride is not helping me. I can’t read her. I know she wants a puppy but am I forcing the issue? Can she resist if they are not the “right” puppies? She has never resisted anything with fur.

Are we even set up to house a puppy…or three? Fences need to be mended, literally not figuratively. If we bring them in, we must declutter…whether we get puppies or not we must declutter.

Crate training and house training…sit, fetch, stay, roll over, play dead. Geez. The fact is they train us as much as we train them…and they are so loving and soooo much fun. There is nothing like a puppy asleep in your lap.

Haisley

They aren’t children…but like children they can’t be left to their own devices. Done right, they require care and commitment. If you think putting a puppy on a chain and leaving it outside is being a puppy parent, you are deluding yourself and making an animal’s life less worth living.

We have ninety acres of land with a large fenced in area around our house. Perfect, except for the wildlife that once ran unimpeded before puppies wanted to herd them. The squirrels, the raccoons, the possums, the bunny that is almost tame. The occasional snake. Decisions, decisions.

Hartley

Like children, they are expensive. They must be dewormed, groomed, their nails trimmed and treated when they get sick. They have accidents.  You have never lived until staggering downstairs in the middle of the night and stepping in a warm, squishy, stinky, goo. “Good morning to you!”

But there is soooo much love to be had…and given. That is the big question. Do I still have the love to give? I do, or I wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Addendum

Our trip didn’t bear fruits or puppies. Turns out that they weren’t as advertised. Do not despair for us because sometimes fate intervenes. We are hot on the trail of a heeler puppy that we will visit this weekend. Until then enjoy the video.

Blog image used from Pixels. Hendley, Haisley, and Harley copied from the shelter site.

Don Miller writes on various subjects and genres. Connect with him at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3-vMhl68w_x0yUPu5L-_NRugT5oWoOBrlnr7QolweAJPyDHgcZP1qhayI

My Little Copilot

/ cigarman501 / 5 Comments

 

When Tilly rode with me, she perched herself on my center console, a paw resting on my arm as if to say, “Aren’t you driving a bit too fast?” or “Your next turn is coming up.”  Maddie just crawled into Mommy’s lap and went with the flow.

Tilly

Sometimes she would rest her muzzle on my shoulder while giving puppy kisses.  I know it’s not smart to allow a puppy to ride on the console, but I grew up in an era when we pretended to surf from the back of a pickup truck.  I was much more careful with the puppies than I ever was with me.

Tilly 4

It is a memory I shall ever hold near my heart…because soon, memories will be all I have left.  Tilly, Miss Matilda Sue, is nearing the crossing of her rainbow bridge.

Her fall has been rapid.  We knew her sister was sick and near the end of her days…although she doesn’t seem to be any closer than when she was diagnosed with liver tumors.

After a suddenly rough night,  Tilly is calm and sedate.  She is in no pain.  We watch her breathe waiting for the last breath.  We have a four-thirty vet visit scheduled just in case.  A good portion of me hopes we don’t have to make it.

Almost fifteen years ago she and her sister, Maddie, Miss Madeline Rue, adopted us, stealing our hearts as they did.  Maddie is still with us, but I worry about how she will react to the absence of her sister.  They have been together for almost fifteen years.  Sometimes buddies, sometimes antagonist, always competitors for our hearts.  Sometimes I hate the circle of life.

Mad and Til

They imprinted on Linda more than they did on me.  I didn’t mind…I imprinted on Linda too.  It is also something I’ve found almost always happens, imprinting more on one than the other.  Late in their lives, both blind, Tilly deaf, they would wander their pathways searching for her scent anytime she was absent from their side.  I love her that much too.  I’m always anxious when she is not around.

EXIF_JPEG_T422

Mommy and her puppies

They were trouble but never troublesome…even when they escaped as mere puppies and traveled over a half-mile from home.  I can remember the joy of finding them replacing the guilt I felt for allowing them to escape.

They came into our lives after losing our long, long, long term puppy, Sassy Marie.  She was a stray who wandered up one day, skinny and skittish, and then left just as quickly…some sixteen years later all fat and Sassy.  She knew she was nearing her time and just left, leaving us to believe she still roams the hillsides around our home.  Maddie and Tilly won’t leave but will haunt us just as deeply…maybe more deeply.

Linda swore we weren’t ready for another pet, that we were just going to look.  A friend’s relative raised Blue Heelers and their puppy had had a litter of sixteen.  “I’m not going to get one, just going to look”, said she.  “Not going to get one?”  It turned out to be a question of how many.  The answer was two.

IMG_0392 (2)

We didn’t have a chance.  Two puppies made their way out of a mass of wagging tails, pointy, upright ears, and blue merle fur with hints of buckskin brown.  They demanded we take them and stole our hearts.  No, we had no chance at all.

L, m and T.jpg

They were too smart for our own good.  Tough knots.  Brave and stubborn, they repeatedly put themselves in harm’s way.  A snake bite here, a wasp sting there.  Sticking their muzzles where they shouldn’t.  There was no doubt they would have defended us with their lives.

My little co-pilot was odd from the beginning, with no Bentley mark and a crooked tail from a birth defect.  Maddie is the perfect one, Tilly the interesting one…no they were both perfect and interesting.  She is now scarred with a cauliflower ear and a gouged nose.   Her imperfections were perfect.  They made me love her even more.

They both brought me gifts but Tilly’s were the best and the worse.  A very alive Brown snake that escaped and I hope found its way out of the house.  Several possums…thankfully playing possum.  One decided to resurrect from the middle of the dining room, leading us on a merry chase through the house.  The other, carrying a half dozen joeys waited until I dropped her over the fence to waddle off as if nothing had happened.  Tilly always stood over them with her lopsided smile, “Look, Daddy, I’m a good girl.”  “Yes, you are.”

Tilly left us this morning (Monday) on her own terms.  She lived on her own terms.  I hope she is off somewhere chasing rabbits, trying to herd squirrels, barking at birds in the trees, ears up and tail pointing crookedly toward the sky.  No longer deaf and blind…no arthritis, no longer in pain.  Fifteen years was not enough…never enough.  I love you Tilly and miss you terribly already.

15681

Miss Madaline Rue April 1, 2005-December 16, 2019

Don Miller’s author’s page may be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

“Be the Man My Puppies Think I Am.”

/ cigarman501 / 1 Comment

For four of the previous five years, I’ve limped into the new year.  Physically for sure and mentally…maybe.  Recently I wondered if it might be tied to the trials and tribulations associated with the age I live in…or the life I’ve aged into.  “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.”  Thanks, Matthew, the end is not yet but sometimes I believe I can see it from here and livin’ in the Age of Trump ain’t helpin’.

This is not about resolutions…I don’t think.  I don’t do resolutions…I do have ambitions like certain fitness goals, and once again I have fallen short as 2018 closes…as I did in 2017…as I did in 2016…. I’ve actually lost most of the weight I gained from my last bout with prednisone.  Unfortunately, that was an additional ten pounds on top of the ten pounds I originally wanted to lose…a net loss of…nothing.

My body just doesn’t absorb doughnut calories as well as it used to…could be that bone on bone rubbing in my knee slowing calorie absorption down.  It also keeps me from doing any kind of running so the “bucket list” marathon is probably out.

Back to the subject…if there is one.  I don’t do resolutions anymore, but if I did, I would use the trite, too often used, “Be the man my puppies think I am.” I am good to them, I treat them better than I treat my fellow man.  Not a bad thing…but not the best thing.  I realize I need to be a part of something bigger than me and my puppies…something I go out and do rather than just pointing my finger at it while stating the obvious, “There is something wrong there.  Someone should do something.”

Our world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket…I know there are many people suffering despite the “trickle down” we received.   My puppies don’t think their world is going to hell in a handbasket.  If Mommy Linda is around, their lives are pretty good.  If there is reincarnation, I want to come back as one of Mommy Linda’s puppy dogs.  Maybe I should treat the world like my puppy dogs.

I watch the people I interact with and if I watch closely enough, concentrate enough, it is easy to see there are still good people in this world…trying to do go things.  Their efforts transcend race, sexual orientation, politics, and religious affiliation.  I see what their love can accomplish…even on the microscopic level.

My best friend, Mike Hawkins, carries blankets around to give to the homeless he runs into…runs into on purpose.  He doesn’t just avert his eyes in hopes the panhandler won’t see him.  Hoping to be invisible to those less fortunate.

My brother, Steve Miller, saw a need and works to support a soup kitchen.  A soup kitchen that has expanded into its own building, feeding and clothing hundreds a week…making life just a bit more livable for those in need.

Church friends Leland and Emily Browder model what it means to be a follower of Christ and have passed on their beliefs of service to their God and humanity to their children and grandchildren.  Mission trips to foreign countries or foreign communities in their own country.  I give thanks to them and others.

In a climate breeding boorish behavior, an atmosphere extolling disrespect for those who you disagree with, when your humility is portrayed as a weakness rather than a strength, men, and women like Mike, Steve, Emily, and Leland go about their daily business of doing good while thumbing their noses at those who believe showing humanity or empathy for others are weaknesses…or that somehow “these others” deserve exactly what they are getting and deserve nothing from them.  Putting action to their words.

Watching their efforts has made me aware of my shortcomings as a caring and gracious human being.  It is time to get off the sidelines and quit watching.  We all need to quit spectating, get into the game and leave our political beliefs in the stands.

At a “meet for coffee on Friday” with Hawk, we met a guy.  Another older fart, just a smarter old fart.  “Forget about national and state-level stuff.  If you want to do something positive if you want to help if you really want to effect change, do it at the local level where it has the most effect.”

As I said last year about this time, I’m not going to attempt to start a movement, run for office or pontificate ad nauseum.    I’m just going to try and make a difference, one person at a time…for real this time.

If interested in donating or volunteering and live in the foothills of South Carolina, I suggest Daily Bread Ministries.  Their webpage may be found at https://www.greersoupkitchen.com/

The verse was Matthew 24.6 KJV

For more of Don Miller’s pontifications, you might be interested in clicking on the following link:   https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Crescent Moons, Puppy Dogs, and the Universe

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

My puppies have interrupted my sleep.  They are blind and if you are blind, I don’t guess you know it is three in the morning instead of three in the afternoon.  It is cold for early December and I don’t guess we got them out enough during the day…maybe we didn’t get me out enough during the day.

I let them out, not to go “wee-wee”, but to lay down in the backyard.  “Girls…it’s twenty-eight degrees.  What are you doing?  Geez…will I ever get back to sleep?”  No, not much.  There is an afternoon nap in my future.

My wife’s flowers are housed in a makeshift hothouse.  At five I decided to walk up and make sure the heat had them toasty.  It was a tropical fifty-five.  I may have to mortgage the farm to pay the winter electric bill.

As I turned to return to the warmth of my home, I looked up into the southern sky and saw a sliver of a crescent moon framed in the leafless branches of a walnut tree.  Low on the horizon, the outline of the dark side was clearly visible as was a shining Venus above it.  The air was clear and the sky cloudless.  A morning an astronomer might dream of. The scene took my breath away and I paused, despite the cold, to bask in the reflection of both the moon and my thoughts.

I struggle with my beliefs.  I do believe in an afterlife…” energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be changed.” Changed into what, I do not know, but I believe the law works for the universe and everyone in it.  I do my best to follow the teachings of Jesus, but…I struggle with the universe and our place in it.

Divine creation?  Big Bang?  A combination of both.  Are they one and the same?  And “God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.”

I struggle with the concept of God…or god.  Despite my struggles, my lack of faith, I talk to him often…I just wish he would talk back.  Just prattle a bit.  There doesn’t have to be an answer to my questions, just answer back.  “I’m here, I hear you.”

Looking through the clear crisp air at the heavenly scene it is hard not to believe in some type of divine plan.  How could something as beautiful as the scene I was viewing not be a part of a divine plan?  As if to add weight to my thoughts I noticed the pinkish glow of dawn approaching.  A most heavenly picture on display and I had been in the cold too long.

I returned to the warmth of my home and found my puppies asleep, Maddie on her back on the couch, Tilly chasing rabbits in her sleep beside her.  How could these two beautiful animals have been created by chance?  Again, God is silent, but I’m not concerned.

Bible verses my Grandmother recited come to mind.  “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork” and “Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”  And this morning, any morning, in the heavens too.

Further musings can be accessed at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image came, interestingly, from The Tree of Knowledge Coven at https://treeofknowledgecoven.com/2013/08/12/my-love-affair-with-the-waxing-crescent-moon/

 

Knocked your Noggin’

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

 

“Watch your head!” followed by “Oops! Knocked your noggin’.”  My beloved says it a dozen times a day…mostly to our blind puppy dogs…but sometimes to me.  With blind puppy dogs, we have had to “puppy proof” all the sharp edges inside and outside our old farmhouse.  Feed bags filled with feed bags to guard and cushion sharp corners or narrow pasteboard boxes turned on their side to keep lost puppies from wandering where they shouldn’t.  I should probably just dress in bubble wrap.

The puppies, Maddie and Tilly, do well considering their disability.  Much better than their master.  I have my vision and still run into things.  I seem to bark my shins or forehead with an increasing frequency.

Coming in and removing my cap, I hear, “What did you do to your head?”  My beloved’s voice is fraught with faux concern, a mischievous grin plays on her lips and an impish twinkle flashes from her hazel eyes.

I’ll have none of it, “You know damn well I scrapped it on your cartop day before yesterday.  It’s just taken this long to scab over.”

If it had not been her canvas convertible top, it would have been something else.  It seems as my birthdays have increased and the hair on my head has decreased I can’t keep my scalp intact and unmarred.  Some mornings I awake and, while brushing my “tooth”, find I have been mugged during the night if the mirror is to be believed.  “Where the hell did that come from?”

I am my father’s son and he and WKRP’s Les Nessman could have been brothers.  Dad would come in from work wearing a band-aid, bandage or dressing on something, usually on his nose or forehead.  The wounded area was usually somewhere not easily camouflaged and in a different spot from the previous one.

Working with him at Springs Mills during my high school days I remember an early morning shift after a late-night football game.  I had dragged a beaten and bruised body into work and found myself emptying quill boxes, quill being the bobbins after they had been emptied of tread.  It was a job I could do on autopilot but probably shouldn’t have.  My father would agree.

I pushed a quill buggy up and down the long allies of looms working myself into a sweaty rhythm.  Push the buggy down the ally, stop, turn to the right, pull out the heavy metal box, carefully empty it into the quill buggy, carefully slam the box back into the loom, turn to the left and repeat.  Yep, autopilot…until you hit something that shouldn’t be there.

If I had been paying attention I would have seen him sprawled in the ally in front of me, but I was on autopilot.  The buggy bounced back at me, both startling me and waking me from my walking nap.  I was soon facing an angry father with blood dripping down his face.  I had startled him as he worked under the loom causing him to sit up quickly.

There are a lot of sharp and hard angles with metal gears under a loom.  Ernest’s forehead had found one and blood was already dripping down his nose…”Oops! Knocked your noggin’” never came to my mind.  The gear teeth left an ugly mark until covered by his pre “Les Nessman” band-aid.

Now, where did I put those band-aids?  I’m going out to work on my tractor.  I’m sure I’ll need one before the day is done.

The image is of Les Nessman sporting his trademark band-aid from the late Seventies comedy series WKRP in Cinncinati.

For more musings by Don Miller https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Ghosts

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

I do believe in ghosts.  Why shouldn’t I?  My home and the surrounding land is full of them.

A ghost, by definition, is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear to the living.  Whether the appearance is a sound, like the creaking of my old house settling or a critter treading on the old pine floors. A fleeting glimpse of some unknown something out of the corner of my eye, just beyond my periphery, triggering a long-forgotten memory.  The way certain shadows fall in the moonlight or an old song that conjures up a ghost from the past.  It’s a ghost even if their spirit resides only in my head.

My favorite quote about ghost was made by NCIS agent Mike Franks, a favorite reoccurring character on the long-running TV program NCIS.  In a conversation with Gibbs about ghosts, Franks allows that ghosts were “But the memories we make. We fill the spaces we live in with them. That’s why I’ve always tried to make sure that wherever I live, the longer I live there the spaces become filled with memories of naked women.”  Well, there is only one memory in my living space of a naked woman and thankfully she is not a memory.

But there are other memories….

I arose early as is my infernal habit.  Standing in the dark, also an infernal habit, I looked through the broad window beyond my kitchen sink gazing into the bright moonlight dappling the flat between my home and my stream.  There was a huge full moon, rapidly setting just above the tall trees on the ridge above casting long shadows that danced in the open space below.

Just off to the side, away from the direction I was looking, I saw her in the mottled moonlight.  I saw her white and black markings…as I often do.  When I looked directly at her…she was gone.  She has been gone now for thirteen years…roaming somewhere on the hillside above us.  Ghostly in the way she continues to remind us of her, lost but not forgotten at all.  A ghost never to fear, only to remember and smile.

Sassy Marie came to us, not us to her.  She left the same way…on her terms.  Everything about Sassy Marie was to be savored on her terms.  If she wanted to be petted, she came to us.  If we wanted to pet, she ran away, leery of what our motivation might be.  If she wanted to come into the house, which was very rare until late in her life, she came in, with or without invitation.  Sassy Marie invited herself through the back gate of our hearts and stayed for sixteen years…until she decided it was time for her to leave.

She was a black and white, border collie mix, a discarded puppy or a runaway.  For several days she survived on the small lizards or road kill outside of our little piece of heaven.  If I tried to make friends…she ran away, only to return later in the day.  Linda Gail enticed her through the back gate with morsels of food and the then-unnamed Sassy Marie decided to stay.  I probably should tell that story differently.  Sassy Marie enticed Linda Gail to open the gate and give her food is a truer rendering of the story.

Sassy Marie was the most infuriating, a contrary, disobliging, lovable, caring, wonderous paradox I have ever encountered…well…next to my bride.  She had the uncanny ability, a type of sixth sense, to know when we were talking about giving her a bath.  She would find a way to disappear into our small, fenced in backyard until that bit of foolishness passed.  Put a leash on her?  Not on your life.  She would look at us as if to say, “I was born to be free of the shackles of life…and no I ain’t wearin’ no collar.”

She realized how well she had it.  No way she would ever walk out of an open gate, invited or not.  Even when we had to tear down a part of the fence during renovations she still refused to set foot outside of her kingdom…until she did.  Again, it was her idea…not ours.

We walked an old logging road and prowled over our kingdom.  Every ravine, every stream that cut it was an adventure.  After thirty plus years the adventures are still there.  Sassy Marie would wait patiently for our return, laying at the back gate, next to the torn down sections.  One day she decided to go with us…she decided and enticed Santana the stray, adopted cat to come with us too.  It was an odd caravan.  Santana yelling in cat, “Wait, wait on me,” until she got tired and laid down refusing to go one step further.  Sassy Marie would lead…until she grew tired or aggravated.  We would find ourselves alone and worry when there was no need.  We would return and find her laying at the gate…with Santana close by.

Sassy Marie had grown weary by her sixteenth year…her sixteenth year with us.  She was older, we just didn’t know how much older.  We knew she was not long for our world and so did she.  On the Christmas Day Linda Gail and I were to drive to visit family in Texas, she disappeared.  We got a late start.  We searched high and low, the ridges and the stream beds, as darkness and our feelings fell.  We knew but we hoped and called our house sitters almost hourly.  Sassy Marie had made her decision to leave us on her own terms…just as she joined us.

Flat rocks, cypress cedars, small clumps of daffodils and a birdhouse on a post mark resting places for our special, animal children.  Lovely goats, a one-legged rooster, bunny rabbits, black cats and a slew of puppy dogs rest in special places…around our grounds and in our hearts.

There is no special memorial for Sassy Marie, except in our hearts…and the marbled shadows of the moonlight or the green shaded leaves moved by the wind.  Her spirit moves along the ridges above our house, in the valleys along the stream beds and in the periphery of our vision and our hearts.

Ghost is a selection from Don Miller’s new release “Cornfields…in My Mind.”  It may be downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CBSV237