THE LAST OF THE THREE GREAT ONES: AN ADVANCE MEMORIAL

The Great Ones were the leaders of my pack of dogs and cats—and me, too, after a fashion.  All were males.  In my mind, they were a brotherhood.

 

Malcolm, a Golden Retriever, was the first.  He was my first family’s dog, adopted my son, and showed what love, loyalty, and looks—he was drop-dead handsome—could be in a dog.

Cowboy, a Collie/Chow blend, was my second family’s dog—family being my wife and me only—, a playmate of the dogs and cats, and protector of all.  In his frail, later years, he had the energy to play with and train his successor, who respected him as his elder.

 That successor is Cassio, who came to me as a rescue—all my dogs (and cats) are rescues—who had nearly been beheaded when someone wrapped razor wire around his neck and tossed him over a fence into the yard of a rescue agency.  Scars on his back legs indicated that he had been chained inhumanely in a yard.  It took nearly a $1000 of surgery to save him.  Shortly after I adopted him, he developed sepsis from which he recovered after four days at my veterinarian’s hospital.  When I went to retrieve him, staff said that I could not have him—just kidding, sort of—for they had all fallen in love with him.  For years, as long as those staff remained, they would drop in to see Cassio when I brought him for shots or examinations.  He was as sweet and gentle as a “boss dog” could be.

       Cassio has done what his elder, Cowboy, taught him: play and protect.  When he was young, he played with Whoppo, a friend’s dog, when we neighbors walked together in the field and farmland behind my house.  One day, my cat Edgar on a leash saw Whoppo approach us and tried to run home.  I picked Edgar up and held him while Whoppo approached us.  Then Whoppo stopped, stood, and turned around to follow his owner.  Since Whoppo liked me and was interested in Edgar, I wondered why he had acted as he had.  Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the reason.  Cassio was sitting in a posture which conveyed a clear message: “I am on guard, I am watching you, be very careful”—this to his friend.  Needless to say, Edgar adored him; so, too, later, my calico, CleoTwo.

       When young, he fell in love with an old lady.  Knowing the Cowboy’s days were numbered, I found Cassio a partner.  Portia, so I named her, was a Greyhound/Heeler blend, represented as 4 years old but actually 9 years old.  (But what elderly beauty does not lie about her age?)  It was love at first sight.  Cassio and Portia shared a large bed pad.  Before she died at age 14, I got Miranda, an American Foxhound.  After Portia died, Cassio slowly took up with Miranda but, to my amazement, has never shared his bed pad with her.  So he has remained, in his way, faithful to Portia to the end.

Now he is showing his age.  He has hip dysplasia, so both rear legs are only semi-functional.  Nevertheless, he has insisted on walking down a steep hill, going on a 1- or 2-mile walk, and then plodding up the hill.  For the past several months, he decided whether to go on the walks, go on them but take a shortcut, or not go but wait for us to climb up for home.  The spirit has remained so strong, but the flesh has become weak.  Two days ago, he lay down before reaching his usual resting point while a friend and I talk.  I made it a cue: no more field walks, only sidewalk trips around the neighborhood.  So he waits while I walk the other dogs behind the house, then walks happily with me.  But I know what the change is: death walks which will end in a few months.

 

The only comfort which I can take at Cassio’s death is knowing that he lived a good life and knowing that the pain which I feel at his death will have been part of the pleasure which he gave me during his life—that’s the deal, as C. S. Lewis says.  My dying wish is the adage, “if dogs don’t go to heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they go.”  Catch you later, Malcolm, Cowboy, and Cassio.

 

But the end of the Three Great Ones is not the end.  There is now a Fourth Great One, Maggie, a German Shepherd, who has not only broken the “glass ceiling,” but also has proven to be the best of all: “mistress” in her possessive affection for me (75-pound, would-be lap dog), protector of me and every member of the pack, “sister” to Miranda, and foster mother to a teensy-weensy kitten and a teensy-weensy puppy.  Happy days are here again.