Faulkner has reached a new milestone-- he didn't ask, last night, to go to bed in either of his two preferred corners. He asked to come upstairs with us.

The logistics for that are not yet in place (his sleeping spot up there is right where we'd trip over him on our way to the loo), so as I went up early I left him downstairs for Hardi to put to bed. But he was loose in the living room to greet me when I came down this morning. So Hardi either left him there all night, or left him there when he went to the office-- or both. Of course there were no accidents, chewed furniture, or raided kitchen. The delay has been F's in the asking, not ours in the offering. I'll have to see if he asks to go to his corner when I leave the house, later today.

It seems that with Sadie's arrival, he's decided he's due for a promotion to the next grade level. And he certainly has more than earned it. But we never ask a dog to do what he is not equipped to do, nor what he doesn't want to do, unless the dog's safety is involved.

Last night I dreamed (again) that he was loose outside and about to get run over in the road that is very, very close to the front door.

That is ONE promotion Faulkner will never get-- being loose on the property. I will not require him to yield his need to run, run, run. Loose elsewhere safe, yes of course... but never on our road. I lost one great dog that way already, thanks to a careless mistake. F is great, and he's stolen my heart. But my BJ-- now there was a dog.


BJ was my first dog rescue. We'd planned to buy a house here, and the sale fell through for complicated reasons, but included in the sale was going to be the widowed owner's dog. BJ had been the dog of her just-departed husband, who had died a long and painful death at home. With BJ always at his side.

When I'd gone to see the house, BJ picked me out. I returned many times to measure, etc., and Cathy asked me if I wanted the dog since she herself planned to move into a small trailer with no running room. BJ was used to the hills around her house and with each visit, she continued to make me hers.

Well, when the sale had to be canceled, I said that I'd still like to take the dog. Cathy graciously agreed, and this was one of my first introductions to the heart of the people here. She was not our parishioner, you see-- just being herself with us. BJ had not really been her dog, as F now is not really mine. And she had seen BJ pick me out.

Cathy sold the house and moved during the month it took me to get back and forth between here and Chicago to complete our move. I drove a full-up vanload here, 12 hours with no stops except for gas, with our daughter and a cat tucked in among the boxes. BJ had spent that month tethered on the property adjoining "her" house, with a parishioner and dog-lover who did the best she could to keep BJ safe and well. It weighed heavily on me that this already-grieving dog was now tied, on a hill she had used to run, with none of her former home, people, and routines. So we swang by before arriving at the house we had rented, to pick her up. I'd saved one BJ-sized spot in the van, and packed a leash.

As soon as I got out of the van BJ had never seen, and quietly said her name, she went nuts on her chain until I got to her to leash her. She came along peacefully to the van, and hopped right in.

My step-dau and I, BJ, and the cat joined Hardi who had taken possession of the house in our absence, and we all spent a month welcoming our two sons "home" to the house from other-parent visitations, awaiting the delivery of our furniture and "stuff.". We camped in the house with the things I'd brought in the van, sleeping on the floors and lounging around on the thick living room carpet without a TV. First month in a new parish is a busy time, anyway. I miss that uncluttered time of summer sunlight pouring through the house!

BJ spent that month calmly shadowing me, riding along if I went anywhere, and curled up next to me on the LR carpet. She was still grieving, and sorting things out. We didn't ask anything of her. She eventually perked up and began to show us what a great dog she was.

I guess she was about 4 or 5. One of her great activities was that she would clean up not only her own dog toys, but anything left on the floor (if asked). We could strew newspaper secitons all over the room and she would bring each piece over to me for disposal, without shredding any of it or even puncturing the delicate newsprint-- just for the joy of bringing presents to her new mom.


It was BJ who taught me how to live with a dog. She eventually got pretty arthritic, but was always a gracious, playful, and loving dog.


I was up very late one summer night waiting for one of the boys to come home, while Hardi was out of town..... it had been a long and bad night with flashbacks of single-parent mode, during a time of extreme teenage rebellion. I finally gave up waiting for him to come home safe, and went up to bed exhausted. The other son helpfully let BJ out for one last piddle, and as I dropped off to sleep I guess I must have half-heard the front door open and close.... she usually was let out the back door.

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.... that's why, when I heard the awful THUMP a moment later through the open bedroom window, I instantly knew that BJ had gotten it in the road. Totally. Our son was horrified of course. It was he who immediately went out with a flashlight to look. He was coming back inside as I came downstairs.

A car-toss away from the road-killed groundhog in the middle of the road, he'd found BJ horribly lengthened, not a scratch on her, wound around the posts holding up a guardrail across from the house. She must have smelled that, gone to investigate, and been too sore and slow to get out of the way of the next car to hurtle down our drag-racing road. She was mostly black-- I'm sure the mortified driver never saw her. (He did stop to inquire.) I'm sure that it was instantaneous and that she never knew what hit her.

[end of graphic text]

My son asked for instructions, and followed them. BJ was wrapped in my favorite poncho, and he buried her the next morning near the pond out back.

That son also was in the throes of rebellion during that time, but he showed his true character in how he handled all that. And he never let a dog out loose again. Oh....! It's HIS socks Faulkner plays with, and it's him who offered to walk F when I went to visit, and of course by the time he offered to do that I had forgotten why he might take such care when I visit with a dog. I thought it was because I took such good care of his cat when he left for the Navy, in the intervening years.

But now I realize-- it was thanks to BJ's teaching of him, too.

~Susan