Scout was born on April 4 2008, south of Minneapolis, at High Flyin' Kennels. I was living with my wife and 2 1/2 year old son in Winnipeg at the time. 8 weeks later I headed south to pick up the young pup. My son is the one who named her, from a short list. Scout was on the list because I had recently re-read To Kill a Mockingbird. For young Gordon it was no choice at all. As soon as he heard the name, that was it!
My good friend Harvey, dog breeder, dog trainer and favoured hunting companion, was living in Alberta at the time. I was doing a lot of travel for work. Harvey volunteered to take the puppy Scout that summer and get her ready for her first hunting season. A meet was scheduled for June somewhere in Saskatchewan and I didn’t see Scout again until Harvey and I met up for our annual Saskatchewan Hungarian hunting week in late September. A guy couldn’t have asked for a better started 6 month old. I still clearly remember her first point! But things don’t always work out the way we plan or hope.
Life took some sharp turns for me very shortly after that season and next thing I knew I had moved to Ontario, become single and was parenting a five year old every second week. Hunting and dog work got put on the back burners. But at the same time Scout excelled at being Gordon’s and my companion. Daily walks through farm fields and along the shores of Lake Ontario, regardless of the weather, kept the three of us connected and helped each of us get oriented to our new reality. With each other and the world at large. Scout was determined to escape the confines of the house and yard and occasionally we would get phone calls from concerned citizens. “I’m on the 14th green and think I have your dog” or “I’m the manager here at the supermarket and your dog is in my store”. What a rascal she was!
She aged gracefully and became, in time, a member of my family’s larger “pack”. My ex wife Kim, had acquired 4 dogs and a large-ish fenced property. Somehow, don’t ask, in aid of a better experience for our son Gordon, Kim and I became neighbours. And soon Scout had 4 half siblings....two Scotties, an Airedale and a Bernese. . When I added Daly three years ago, the pack became six. She loved to talk to the coyotes at night on the other side of the chain link fence. When she stayed at Kim’s house, with its kennel and dog doors, she instantly became nocturnal, all the better to hang with the coyotes at 1 in the morning. She even had a suitor a few summers back. Who would come every evening about 8 pm and hang around my house hoping for a glimpse of Scout. And every evening Scout would sit at the front window, waiting for that scrawny, mangey little coyote’s arrival. Both of them were besotted with each other. Idiots! The two of them!
She tried very hard not to make it to 15. When she was 10 she was bitten by a rattlesnake. At death's door and then came back. Two years later she discovered a taste for malathion and tried very hard to kill herself. Again, we were writing her obit when she decided to rejoin the living. And two summers ago, she got into something else mysterious. All we know is that it mirrored the malathion adventure all over again. The vets were as mystified as we were.
As we have sat with her today she has often been surrounded by her pack. They know somethings up. They sit or lay quietly near her. Scout lost the ability to hear several years ago but she can still see. She knows they are there. They calm her as the long permanent night approaches. In times like this one is always concerned. “Is she in pain?” Kim reminded me this morning. Somehow Scout’s pain receptors didn’t really seem to develop. Throughout her life she has been impervious to pain. Remarkably so. This sounds ridiculous but the shock collar was essentially useless. She was headstrong and stubborn. One of the things I loved most about her was that she had her own agenda. It was great when it lined up with mine but she would say that was just dumb luck if it happened.
I’ve had some great dogs in my life and I’ll have more. Scout may not be the greatest hunting dog I’ve owned or will own but that failing is with me. She had the goods. But she was as good a friend as one could have in a dog. I can’t imagine a better one and I will miss her terribly.
Where To Bury A DogThere are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave.
Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death.
Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else. For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last.
On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost -- if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.If you bury him in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, he will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they should not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he is yours and he belongs there.
People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of it's master. [u][/u]
This is my favorite picture of her. Scout is on the left.
![[Linked Image from photos.smugmug.com]](https://photos.smugmug.com/Dogs/i-3MSqCCC/0/1def946b/XL/b446238e-15c6-48e3-a5d2-932ddb1e6da8_zps597i1hqk-XL.jpg)
