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This is a celebration of the all too short, but very useful and happy
life of our dear little companion and friend of the past 11+ years,
Muffin.
Muffin was a female Lhasa Apso, a breed of dog once described by Mike
Royko, a Chicago based columnist, as a useless little hound. Little did
he know how useful a Lhasa can be. Muffin seduced herself into our lives
when she was 9 weeks old and very blonde. Our sons thought I needed a
dog to persuade me to take it for walks and in that way become somewhat
less of a couch potato. Not knowing that one does not buy from a pet
shop, we visited such a place in Santa Clara, California which had
advertised Lhasa pups. The shop had Muffin, and her even blonder sister,
who had been born September 17, 1983 in Kansas and very recently shipped
to Santa Clara. I liked her sister, but when my wife picked up little
Muff she climbed up and kissed her neck, and that was the end of that.
Home with us she came.
Muff grew to be 18+ pounds, turned from blonde to dark gray as she
matured, and then back to light gray as she got old. She was something
of a sight with a little white goatee, and white on her tummy.
Contrary to what Mike Royko avowed, Muffin had many useful duties which
she discharged in exemplary fashion throughout her life. Let me count
the ways.
First off was the chore of getting me off the couch, which she did by
insisting that we go for a nice long walk every day up and down the
street on which we lived. With her friendly nature, we soon knew
everyone who lived on the street or who came there to walk. She soon
learned that joggers were too self-absorbed to pay attention to her, so
she ignored them as they did us. In recent years we have lived on a golf
course and Muff accompanied us on a morning walk of about a mile, and
every afternoon about an hour or so before sunset she would look me up
and let me know it was time to wheel out her golf cart and play a few
holes of golf.
Another of her duties has been to guard the golf cart and the cars. I am
proud to say that we have had no golf carts or cars stolen since we had
her.
The job of inspecting motel rooms which we rented on fishing trips fell
to Muff, and she was fast and thorough in her casing of the rooms, and
the grounds as well where circumstances permitted her running loose.
Some duties she took on without being asked or coached. One was to bark
at waves or ripples in the water when we would park the boat to fish
from shore or eat lunch. And she loved boats. We had a cabin cruiser on
SF Bay and when I would go there she would snooze on the car seat until
we got close enough that she could smell the baylands, then it was up at
the window to check the distance until we would be at the boat.
Her most important contribution to our well-being was just before the
horrible San Francisco earthquake of October 17, 1989. My wife and Muff
had been sitting upstairs in a TV room that had bookcases all along one
wall, said cases being made essentially of 2x12 redwood boards. Just
before the earthquake struck I had returned from the golf course and my
wife started down stairs to let Muff out to greet me. Half way down the
earthquake hit and threw the bookcases and books all over the chair
where my wife had been sitting. Had she not moved to let Muffin out she
very likely would have been seriously injured.
I guess Muff's most important duty has been to make us smile, as I did
every morning for more than a thousand times when she would literally
prance down the cart path with tail and head high when we were on our
morning walks. And she made others smile, some even laughed at the nerve
of a ball of fluff acting like a real dog. Mr. T. who lived down the
street had a stroke a couple of years back which left him unable to walk
or talk, but when we would meet him as he took air in his wheel chair he
would stop and stroke Muffin with his right hand, and smile.
I won't forget how happy she was when I returned from the hospital after
a cancer operation. She just plain jumped for joy at seeing me back. She
stuck with me like glue for a couple of days until she was satisfied
that I was not going off and leaving her again.
There are a lot of other duties which Muffin carried out with vigor and
great reliability. I will mention a few of them very briefly:
Trying to scare the neighbor's cat away from our swimming pool;
Warming my feet when I laid down on the couch to watch TV;
Chasing the bunnies off the golf course, and treeing the squirrels;
Keeping all sorts of critters off our back patio;
And now I am reminded that God doesn't give us pets, He just lends them
to us for a while. Last night was particularly beautiful and we played 5
holes of golf. I pared 3 of them, drove the green on a 176 yard par 3,
which I hadn't done since before the operation more than a year ago. I
think Muff sensed because she had made me walk when I really didn't want
to walk, made me smile when there was not a lot else to smile about,
kept me swinging the golf clubs even when the results were dismal, and
had often warmed my feet and my heart, that I had gotten about as well
as I was going to get, and that she could now in good grace move on and
escape the discomfort of her illness and the indignity of not being able
to do things which she had always done so easily and so joyfully like:
Run flat out for a hundred yards;
Or run at an easy lope for three hundred yards;
Chase the bunnies off the golf course;
Jump up on the couch to warm my feet and my heart;
So this morning I held her close while the vet gave her a shot to start
her on her journey to wherever good little dogs go when their time here
with us runs out. We wish her bon voyage and godspeed. And although we
miss her terribly we choose not to grieve at her leaving, rather to
cherish the many happy memories from the time she was permitted to share
with us.
As she left the thought expressed by son Mike when he told her good-bye
for what he knew would be the last time came to mind again. He said:
"Good-bye little girl, you rest up and get strong so when we meet again
on the other side we can have some more of our good fights that we both
loved so much."