Here's a story I recently ran in one of my newspaper columns. I know it's kind of long, but some of ya'll might enjoy it.
The censored word is the abbreivated word for racoon. My, we are politicly correct.
Dick
The Politics of a [censored] Dog Funeral
We stood in the warm sun during the benediction. I held my hat to my chest and watched a yellow jacket on the ground and thought about all the different reasons people were here. I was here to get an unusual story. I’d driven past the National [censored] Dog Cemetery about 20 years ago on a business trip. I’d thought it a little strange when I drove past it, but I didn’t think about it again until my old lab, Ernie, was getting up in the years and I was wondering what kind of place would make a suitable final resting place for him.
Recently, Susann Hamlin, of the Colbert County Tourism, invited Cherie and me to attend the funeral of White Hills The Merchant, a champion [censored] dog and, since it was a wonderful time for a drive to Alabama, we decided to make the trip. So far, we’d had a great catfish dinner at The Old Rocking Chair the night before, we’d driven out in the Alabama sunshine down long winding country roads stopping to let a flock of wild turkeys cross in front of us, and we’d met Ray Frost, the owner of “Merch,” who was to be interred today.
Ray told me of Merch’s accomplishments and championships, a story to be repeated during the funeral, and he told me about how he knew Merch would make a great dog. He said that when Merch was 6 weeks old he took the whole litter across the creek, led them to where the water was deep and called them. Only Merch made the swim across the creek sealing the deal that he would be the one of the litter that stayed.
By the time Merch was 6 months old, Ray told me, he was hunting by himself. (I thought of my Larry doing such a good job on doves at just 5 months). He told me about how Merch had died at 7 years old from a freak medical accident (I thought of losing our Molly at 5 years). He told me of how he had not wanted to leave Merch in Pennsylvania since he was moving and decided to put him in the National [censored] Dog Cemetery (I thought of how I felt about what to do with Ernie’s remains, settling with leaving his cremated remains on a shelf in my office).
Cherie and I petted his other dogs, while Ray told me about each of them as one would describe his children; we talked about our dogs and how we often travel with them. I was amazed at how much we had in common as dog people.
As people arrived at the graveyard, I noticed that most of them didn’t look like [censored] hunters. I knew that for Suzanne and Colbert County, this was a media opportunity. There were three television stations and several writers covering the event. They were there to get a story to use as a human interest piece that was unique to the area. Many of the folks there were there just for the curiosity of a [censored] dog funeral. I’m sure they planned to go home and tell their friends where they’d been and have a little fun telling it. There was even a group of Harley riders in the procession that met in the parking lot of the Colbert County Tourism office.
I felt sympathetic for Ray because the funeral of his dog had become a media event. Then, I considered the fact that I wasn’t any different, I wasn’t there to mourn the loss of Merch, I was there to get a story and enjoy a little local color in one of my favorite places, Alabama. Of course, there were some real [censored] hunters there, like 87 year old Clinton Dexter, who said he was too old to [censored] hunt these days but he still liked to hear the dogs. I talked to several men in camo, men in overalls, men with scruffy beards and tattered clothes, and men with nice clothes, who all love to hear hounds and love dogs. Many reminisced about dogs and hunts in the past. As I talked to them, some showed me the graves of their dogs and told me about hunts past with them.
Just a week after the funeral, I was in Salamanca, New York. I met a father and son named Josh and Victor Wood from Penn Yan, New York. I mentioned the funeral and Josh asked the name of the dog. I told him Merch. “I know that dog, he belonged to Ray Frost,” he said. We spent the next hours talking of dogs and hunts past.
When the time came to lower the casket in the grave, Ray struggled without any help. Somehow in all the planning for the funeral, no one had thought of this part. With the crowd gathered around the grave site, Ray tried to get ropes around the casket to lower it. Realizing the problem, I jumped in and helped arrange the ropes. Two young men stepped in to help Ray and me lower the casket. As the casket reached the bottom of the grave, a wave of sadness swept over me. I felt the pain for every dog I have loved and lost in this life. It was like Ernie, George, Molly, and all the others were in that casket. I blubbered like a baby.
I was embarrassed at my emotion. I shook Ray’s hand and stepped back into the crowd feeling silly and then looked around. I wasn’t the only guy with wet eyes. They were everywhere. We had all come to bury this dog for different reasons, but we all were thinking of our canine friends that were gone. Maybe we weren’t so different after all.
