doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Goodbye old friend!

You have my condolences, I was in your place 3 months ago. You will eventually feel better but you will never forget. Mark

�Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really.�

Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Condolences as well.

There is a high hill up on my mother's family farm, now farmed by my uncle. It overlooks fields, draws, and ponds that have harbored countless pheasants and quail over the past half-century. One can see many, many, places where wonderful points, flushes, and retrieves took place. It's a lovely spot, but I go up there very seldom. There is a row of collars hanging along on the fence, each having belonged to a wonderful friend and companion. I'm seriously considering having my urn buried up there as well.....

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and kind words. My sympathy goes out to those of you who also just recently lost a great companion.
In my mind, a man has not felt true companionship and loyalty unless he has opened his heart to a dog.

Here's one of my favorite dog stories, by Randy Wayne White.
http://soquoted.blogspot.com/2006/03/dog-story.html

Guns,

In some way hard to put exact, the quality of a man's life may be judged by the number of good dogs he has been allowed to associate with.

Their loss never comes easily & we lose them only with the greatest reluctance. Their memory, indelibly imprinted in our minds, kaleidoscopic.

I have always found these few lines written by some unknown person say so much and with such true understanding of loss.

Now that I am dead cry for me a little,
Think of me sometimes.
But not too much!
Remember me now and again as I was in life,
at some moment when it is pleasant to recall, but not for long!
Leave me in peace, and I shall leave you in peace.
And while you live let your thoughts be with the living.

Anon

It was either Steve Allen or Jack Paar who said: "Old men bury many dogs." It is a sad thing to lose a wonderful companion.It is the best thing we can do for an old faithful dog to give them the death he deserves: asleep and in the arms of one who loves him the best. We have all been there and understand.
Canvasback once posted this either here or at the 16 gauge forum and it says it all:

Oh God, my master,
should I gain the grace
to see thee face to face
when life is ended,
grant that a little dog who once pretended
that I was God
might see me, face to face.




Gil

Brian I am so sorry to hear this news. Like so many of us I know how hard it is for you and your family right now. There are a number of lovely poems of remembrance rhat have been posted here over the years. I can't read the one RWTF referenced with tearing up at the memories of the three Llwellins that are no longer with me except in my memories. I hope you can find some comfort in one of them and when you read them over the coming years be reminded of the joy your Springer brought you.

Life has less colour without a dog in it.

My first two Llewellins weren't littermates but were very close in age and after the second died I resolved to never have two dogs the same age again. Was just too hard. So with Scout now turning 7 this coming spring, I am on the hunt for a new Llewellin puppy.

I've recited this brief poem over the graves of 3 gun dogs, and posted it a couple times on bird hunting forums. I first saw it near the end of John D. Rucker's wonderful 1992 book The Barney Years, about his young adult life with a remarkable springer. Here's what Rucker wrote there of the poem's source.

"At the grave side I quoted the little dog poem that I had found years ago in Dad's handwriting on the back cover of the Georgia-Florida Field Trial Book, with the initials "BCB." "

Jay