IN MEMORIUM

My Beloved Dog, Typpee

She was a Poodle-Something mix, blonde like me, and - also like me - with one gimpy leg.We sorta looked like the dog-human match that you see in cartoons, both of us limping along together.

I found her at The Pound - the Humane Society up the road from us.  I wanted a nice little doggie girl, a companion I could lavish affection on and maybe even dress up. Well, she was a sensible critter, too sensible to allow the baby-clothes-routine, but readily amenable to lavish affection, which she returned in spades. They told me she was 13 years old when I got her, her right back leg withered from a possible coyote attack in her youth.  But I think she was closer to 8 or 9...and that was 9 years ago. At any rate, she was pretty old, but as of last Sunday still dancing on 3 legs and with the sweetest disposition imaginable.

She had been asthmatic for the past few years, her familiar coughing and wheezing a comforting signal of her dear presence. Always the lady, she loved being groomed and would hold still for almost anything, including baths, clippers and baby kitties.

Yesterday she went to sleep as I petted her, and her labored breathing stopped. 

We put her in the flower courtyard under a delicate kumquat tree that bears heavily every year. It's a pretty spot, one that we pass several times daily, and a good place to remember her.

I will miss her terribly.