Lucy In The Sky

When my oldest son walked up with a brown mutt in tow, I heard that classic line for the first time: "She followed me home. Can I keep her?" He knew, of course, that I wasn't really interested in having a pet at that time. But we did live outside of town, and we had a fenced-in yard.

I told him she probably belonged to someone else along the road, but he had an answer already prepared for that. "I asked the guy who lived in the house there, and he said she'd been dumped out there and had been wandering around for a couple of weeks," he said.

I looked her over. She was thin from her time on the streets, but she was friendly and was stuck to my son like a goathead. I said, "Well, leave the gate open. If she's still here in the morning, we'll keep her." The next morning, there she was, waiting at the door with a smile. So we shut the gate.

Over the next few months, we taught her to sit, taught her not to jump, and named her Lucy. I sang "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Hang On, Lucy" (it fit the tune nicely, even though it wasn't quite right), and she danced along. All in all, we had a blast.

In later years, we bought some chicks and taught her to protect them. She was an amazing hunter, and didn't let anything in the yard that we didn't want in the yard.

Once, I heard her barking in the back yard and looked out to see that she had cornered a rattlesnake behind an old door that was leaned up against a building. She was barking and snapping at it, and then I would see it for just a second as it struck at her and then retreated.

For the most part, she dodged the strikes, but it finally sunk its teeth into her face. Still she fought it, barking and wagging her tail excitedly as she snapped at it again and again. Eventually, we were able to kill it, and she immediately took it's body between her teeth and began to parade it around the yard proudly. Every inch of her body shouted: "Look what I did!"

By that time, her face was already swollen and sagging. We treated her wound, and she recovered within the next couple of days. For days afterward, she continued to carry the corpse around, until finally, my husband managed to get it away from her.

Through the years, she saw us out the gate every morning and was there waiting for us to return every evening, dancing while sitting and smiling (but never licking), waiting patiently (or perhaps not so patiently) for a kind word and a pat on the head.

She was, in short, one of the best dogs -- one of the best pets, in fact -- that I've ever had in my life. So it was with great sadness that we walked her through the last of her days on this earth Christmas before last. She was experiencing organ failure, dying slowly, over a period of days. She was old, and there was nothing to be done.

My oldest son sat with her, petting her and speaking softly to her during those days, spending every last moment with her and never crying until she became tired and sent him away with a soft growl. On the last morning, we were both with her. My son had been with her for hours by the time I came out to relieve him, and he needed to use the bathroom. She looked at me, and I told him to go ahead and go in to relieve himself. He hesitated, but did as I told him.

While he was gone and, I think, because she was waiting for him to be gone, I sat with her in her final death throes, looking her in the eyes and telling her what an amazing dog she was and how much we would miss her. And so passed from this earth one of the best dogs there ever was.

When he returned from the bathroom, and saw the scene laid out before him, he broke down in tears. We both did. We stood by her body and held each other, unable to contain our grief. She loved us, you see. She loved us so much that she didn't leave us, even with the gate wide open. And she didn't want to leave him even then; in fact, she held on for hours, just waiting for him to walk away, unable to disappoint him in the simple act of dying.

And so, you may wonder, which of these is my favorite memory of our sweet pet? The answer is simple: Every one of these memories is special to me, each in its own way. Each of them show her love for us, and the love we always returned to her. Now she is gone, but she will never be forgotten.

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