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If a Dog Be Well Remembered

by Ben Hur Lampman

from the 1925 Portland Oregonian
               We are thinking now of a dog, whose coat was flame in the sunshine and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or unworthy thought.
                This dog 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.
                For if the dog be well-remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where the dog sleeps. 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 pastureland, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost -- if memory lives.
                But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, 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 shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth knowing.
                The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.

In Loving Memory:

Cu Sidh Sassy Velvet Skye HC
"Skye"
July 11, 1989 - April 12, 1996

Random Acres Cu Sidh Comedy
"Lucy"
November 11, 1990 - February 4, 1998

Random Acres Just Fer Grins
"Pepsi"
December 14, 1988 - May 28, 1998

Ch. Loch Vale Shamrock
"Patrick"
March 17, 1993 - March 5, 1999

Loch Vale Shannon's Spun Gold
"Quaid"
May 19, 1994 - August 22, 2002

Windcrest Catch Th' Moon
"Mia"
June 11, 1991 - February 7, 2005

Loch Vale Four Leaf Clover
"Tricia"
May 19, 1994 - October 27, 2006

Shenstone Loch Vale Gossip
"Gossip"
January 17, 1997 - July 10, 2007

Apache Moon Over Loch Vale
"Sasha"
December 30, 1996 - July 10, 2007

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