Prince

Our collie seemed more human than canine.
What a personality!

Mr. Sassy Pants would put on the dog brakes in the midst of a walk and wouldn't move until we'd removed his leash.
I'm too sexy for this leash.

He reminded me of that 1990s song....

Now our Beautiful Boy is gone,

and I'm still not ready to write about him.

You can see a bit more here:

My husband doesn't want to see photos of Prince or talk about him for a long time - which is a sign of how profoundly he feels this loss.

I'm searching for a poem about a man who digs a grave for his dog, who will soon have to be put down, and the dog - tail wagging - walks up the hill with him and sits in the sunshine, watching him dig. Why can't I find it.

Here's Kipling and Neruda:

Four Feet – Rudyard Kipling

I have done mostly what most men do,
And pushed it out of my mind;
But I can’t forget, if I wanted to,
Four-Feet trotting behind.
Day after day, the whole day through—
Wherever my road inclined—
Four-Feet said, ‘I am coming with you!’
And trotted along behind.
Now I must go by some other round,—
Which I shall never find—
Somewhere that does not carry the sound
Of Four-Feet trotting behind.

---

A Dog Has Died – Pablo Neruda

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

THANK YOU for reading, and may you have many many years with your own beloved canine companions!