A Farewell to Spike

I’ve dug a lot of graves in my lifetime. Burying friends is a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.

There is that character in Hamlet, Act IV, that says, “There is no ancient gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam’s profession,” which probably gives me more credit than I am due but I’ll take it not always having been viewed as a gentleman.

I have been many things to many people. On the side, I bury dogs; mine, and those belonging to others. I only draw the line at familiarity, burying dogs I do not know only in emergency.

It started when I was ten. The cat I buried at seven at the behest of my friend David and his sister Gladys does not count, cats not being much count at all in the quail fields, in fact quite the contrary. You can bury the cats. I’ll bury the dogs.

No man ever had a better friend than a dog, if loyalty is to be the main marker of friendship. You can kick a dog in the ribs, and two minutes later he will lick your hand. Your other friend will not do that. Talk to me about loyalty then.

Well, and don’t kick either man or dog in the ribs.

Nobody knows for certain when the powerful connection between man and beast was made. Some say a hunter stumbled upon a den of wolf pups, eyes not yet open, gathered them up and took them home to raise, divvying up amongst friends those he did not want to fool with, the results being a long train of successes and failures.

Others say wolves always followed man about, both being wanderers and opportunists of the most devious sorts, eating their garbage, and occasionally men themselves. And women and children. It’s not a myth. Out of that close proximity may have grown some tenuous relationship based on mutual dependency.

Who knows? I know I like dogs profoundly, as do you, I would guess, else you would’ve stopped reading this several paragraphs ago.

Here’s the problem: What do you do with your best friends when they die? You can’t just leave them above the ground for the buzzards and crows to pick at. A true friend will bury a true friend. Personally. No middleman. You’ve got a lot of yard, and a shovel right over there.

After years of burying my “own”, I can no longer do it. I’ve got a bad back that tried to kill me this past spring. Literally. When Spike The Wonder Dog, my old black friend, died in his kennel last week out here on the Branch, I called another old friend, Brian Loveland, to come out and help with the chore.

Late summer is not the time of the year to be digging graves in Oklahoma. Wicked things prosper around sweating bodies at this time of year; foot numbing sand burs, blood-sucking horseflies. The ground is as hard as a drill sergeant’s heart and has not seen good digging dirt in two months.

“Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need; mercy-drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.”

Brian used a steel “digger tool”, a five foot long steel pole with a chiseled end to break up drought-dry soil and sandstone under oaks alongside the kennel, and then a shovel to fashion a neatly square grave. I dragged Spike to the hole; Brian dragged him in, removing and handing me his collar, and covered him up.

Done.

The worst thing about owning a dog, and they’re all good ones, is that their masters almost always outlive them.

I poured iced tea in the kitchen. We sat quietly allowing sweat to evaporate. Recollections came into the room like old ghostly friends and sat down all around us silently, respectfully.

After a bit, Brian recalled a latter day when he and his father dug a septic system, tank and lateral lines, all with pick and shovel, no Ditch Witch to it, for their farm home up in Osage County. Man and eleven year old boy. The ties that bind, Johnny would’ve said.

As he spoke, I recalled to myself, a January when Spike retrieved a drake greenwing teal from across a hundred yards of wave-ripped, steel gray water. Just him and me. Bird delivered, he shook one time and ice crystals formed all over his body turning him instantly into a Water House sculpture. He grinned at me, or so it seemed. A tie that binds.

If I can fix it, I’m going to try to not have to bury one of these wonderful creatures again.

© 2016 Conrad M. Vollertsen