I Was Thinking... The Love of a Dog

Recently our family suffered a loss when our daughter’s 15-year-old dog passed away. If you haven’t lived with a pet for an extended period, this may not seem like a big deal, but for many people, pets can become a real part of the family.
Maisey was a black lab mix that my daughter got as a puppy from Paws and Claws. I grew up with dogs and always had a fondness for them. My wife on the other hand grew up with a cat. But it did not take long for this little black puppy to convert my wife into a dog person as well.
While our oldest daughter made a definite choice to adopt this little puppy, our youngest daughter had a cat adopt her. On a cold winter day while walking from the parking lot to the school where she taught in Bemidji, a small black kitten with some white markings wandered up to her. Being soft hearted, she couldn’t just let this stray out in the cold.
The kitten was very lucky she had picked the right person to approach. Thus, the kitten’s name became “Lucky.” This little kitten grew into a great companion for my daughter and also a member of our family since we had several chances to “pet sit.”
Both the cat and the dog became frequent visitors to our house and became quite at home here as well. However, they never did become friends with each other.
When our daughter got married, Lucky had to adapt to a man around the house. But since he often worked from home, Lucky soon became his constant companion and my daughter had to compete with her husband for the cat’s affection. Unfortunately, pets don’t live as long as their owners and Lucky is no longer with us either. It was really a sad day when the little black cat with six toes left the family.
Growing up on a farm, we always had animals around and almost always had a dog. To a little boy growing up in the country away from other kids, a dog was a great companion. The dog would go wherever I went, which was great until you tried to play hide and seek.
If my mom wanted to know where on the farm I had wandered, she just had to call the dog and wherever he came from is where I was. Unfortunately, we lived along a very busy highway and most of my dog’s lives ended tragically. But after a lot of tears and a proper amount of time for mourning the loss of your best friend, we would get another dog and my love affair with the new four-legged friend would begin again.
But why would you want to go through all that when you realized it could end up badly again? The next one could also be hit by a car or would not live as long as you did. But sometimes there are things you can get from a pet that you can’t even get from people.
Somebody once said, if you put your wife in the trunk of your car for an hour and you put your dog in the trunk for an hour, which one would be happy to see you when you opened the trunk?
Dogs are very forgiving. They are also very non-judgmental. Dogs don’t care which religion you profess. They don’t care if you are a liberal or conservative. The color of your skin doesn’t affect their loyalty. A dog doesn’t judge you on your educational achievement or the amount of money in your check book.
A dog will love you if you are a little kid or if you are over 70 years old. They never make fun of you for what you wear, how much you weigh, or if you aren’t very good looking. However, they do notice one thing. They notice how you treat them. They are very good at returning love when love is shown to them. We could learn a lot about dealing with others by watching how a dog loves.
Our whole family was deeply saddened by the loss of Maisey, our four-legged family member that played ball, gave sloppy kisses, and loved chicken. While we will all miss her, our lives were all enriched by the type of dog love she gave to all of us.
Did You Ever Wonder? — Why do cats always seem to throw up in the middle of the night?