Vaya Con Dios Mi Compadre

I guess there are worse ways to start a blog than saluting a great dog and mourning his passing. That's my pal Dusty over there on the right. He passed away last weekend and it really let some of the air out of me, out of our whole family.

We picked Dusty up from the pound back in the winter of '97. The doc there figured he was about three years old then and told us he was a lab/greyhound mix. We were looking for a short haired dog with a sweet disposition and Dusty fit the bill to a tee. For awhile I thought he might be too sweet.

We brought him home to our apartment on a Friday afternoon and that night we decided he would sleep at the foot of my daughter's bed. Guarding the family treasure right? Well as luck would have it, early Saturday morning we were visited by an intruder.

Around four that morning I woke to the sound of someone struggling with our front door lock. I asked my wife if she heard the same thing I was hearing. Next the front door was opening and closing and I sat bold upright and grabbed my pistol. Our hallway light came on and heavy footsteps headed down the hall towards our bedrooms. I wanted to get out of bed but I was buck naked and still couldn't believe what was happening. Then our bedroom door opened and the intruder hit the light switch.

All I remember about the guy is that he was white with a vaguely Southern accent. He looked at me and my wife sitting up in our bed and said "who the hell are you?". I said "No mister, who the hell are you?". Around that time he realized there was a large caliber handgun pointed right at him and his face went from confused to scared before he turned on his heel and took off. I don't know why but I got up out of bed and gave chase.

My wife never gets tired of telling people it was the most hilarious thing she ever saw in her life. I went as far as the parking lot, just beyond our front porch but the guy had vanished and I was glad he did. Holding another man at gunpoint while you're naked has just got to be illegal, even in California.

But back to Dusty, I realized I hadn't checked my daughter's room yet so I got some shorts on and opened her door. The damn dog had climbed up into bed with my daughter but was wide awake and wagging his tale. Not a peep out of him while our home was being violated. Not a good start.

But I couldn't blame him, he was just confused about where his home was that night. Later on he became a great early warning device, if anybody got near the front of our apartment he'd perk right up and let out a muted, husky bark, sometimes followed by a little growl. Of course it was always the paper boy or legitimate company.

Dusty had some abandonment issues. My theory is that his previous owners had just dumped him off somewhere. For awhile at first he dreaded getting into the bed of my little white Toyota pickup. He'd get all mopey and go limp like a hippy at a sit-in. I had to open the tailgate and the Camper shell, pick him up and toss him in. Crazy dog. Then I saw one of the county's Animal Control trucks tooling around town. Of course it was a white Toyota Tundra with a white camper shell. Jeez, every time I took him for a ride the poor little guy thought he was headed back to the hole.

He loved to go for walks and sometimes he would get way out ahead of my daughter and I, off in his own world of wonderful outdoor smells. Then he'd realize he was alone and look around for us in a panic. The first time this happened we were in a school yard. Dusty was maybe 100 yards away when he saw us and came running full tilt back toward us but a small chain link baseball backstop was in the way. We thought sure he'd just motor right around it but he didn't. He hit that thing face first at full speed. Scared the crap out of me but he got right up and ran over to us no worse for wear.

Eventually he figured out that he was part of our family and we shared many adventures over the the last eight years. I was surprised to find out that he would actually point when he sensed a nearby quail up in the Sierra National Forest and he was at least as good a retriever as I was a wingshot.

The thing I treasure most about him though was how much he loved us. We'd leave him at home by himself for a few hours and when we'd get back he'd be there to greet us with kisses and that crazy wagging tail but then he would scold us for leaving him with this funny groaning/howling noise he made. One time he followed me all the way from our den back to my bedroom moaning the whole way. I sat down on the bed and started taking off my shoes and he just stood there the whole time chewing me out.

My daughter fawned all over him and dressed him up in ridiculous Reindeer antlers and Christmas sweaters and he endured it all with patience and gentleness.

He was around 40 lbs. but was just a big lap dog really. Other than going for walks I think his favorite thing to do was to sit on the couch between my wife and I while we watched TV. He'd drift off to sleep and his legs would twitch and he'd growl and we'd laugh and say "tonight Dusty runs with the big dogs".

Dusty died last Saturday night, of heart failure I guess. We had been out in the back yard barbecuing and enjoying the sunset. I was sitting in a cheap camp chair and Dusty had wormed his way between me and a small table on my right. As I got up from the chair, one of the legs buckled and I fell back, flat on my butt. Dusty was wedged between me and the table and as he struggled to get free, a glass fell off the table and broke. I got up and got a broom and dustpan to clean up the glass and went out to the trash to throw the shards away.

When I came back, Dusty was off by himself in the back corner of one of our flowerbeds, panting heavily. He wouldn't come to us and I knew right then he was dying. I picked him up and brought him inside, we laid him on his blanket on our living room floor but he never got back up. His breathing just got weaker and weaker until he died.

I've never seen people cry so much in my life.

I wrapped him in the blanket and left him on the floor until sunrise the next morning. My wife, daughter and I drove our dog up to a meadow in the Sierra National Forest where he loved to run. We found a spot at the foot of a large granite boulder and two cedar trees. The ground was soft and I buried him in his blanket good and deep while the girls made a small bouquet of wildflowers. I think we did right by him.

So welcome to Reno's Blues, I'll be posting some thought's, observsations and recommendations on all kinds of stuff from things I know alot about like music, and fishing, to things I know very little about, like politics and religion. Everybody's comments are most welcome. I'll try my best to keep it clean and respectful.