It Was A Wonderful (Dog's) Life

May 17th to 23rd is National Dog Bite Prevention Week. It's a safety campaign that gets a big push every year from the US Postal Service and pet-friendly organizations like the Humane Society. If my first dog was still around, he would be the perfect mascot for this nationwide effort. And I know what you're thinking right now--"Oh no, here comes another heart-wrenching variation of Marley and Me combined with Old Yeller."

Not exactly. The dog was, in fact, a yellow lab, and I do miss him. But what surprised me after he passed away was how much OTHER people missed him. In a quiet, unassuming way, that dog developed an extensive network of close friends outside the household. It's entirely possible he had more friends than I do.

His name was Towser, and raising him didn't add up to anything I could write into a hilarious movie script. He was pleasant and affable, like Jimmy Stewart. Every person who met him said he was about the nicest pet in the world.

In the autumn of 1994, at the age of 11, he got sick. Numerous tests couldn't find the cause, and no medicine seemed to help. In six months he went from 71 pounds down to 45. When he had trouble standing up we decided the time had arrived to put him to sleep.

What happened after that caught me off guard. The Federal Express delivery people were seriously upset when they heard the bad news. They used to give Towser a treat on every visit, but I had to make them stop when he began having bad stomach issues. I remember one day when a new FedEx guy showed up, and I started to tell him not to hand out any biscuits but he quickly nodded and said, "Oh, I already know that. Everyone down at the office knows Towser isn't feeling good."

The people who ran the kennel where our pal stayed when we went out of town were stunned when I told them he was gone. "That's just terrible," said the owner. "We LOVED your dog!" And they gave him extra service, too. On Towser's final visit, about three months into his slow decline, I had brought along several quarts of cottage cheese because that was the only food he could tolerate. But his appetite perked up while we were gone and the supply ran out early, so the kennel people went to the store and bought more cottage cheese and never charged me for it.

The United Parcel Service drivers were totally bummed out. Neighbors stopped by to say how sorry they were. And somewhere out in the world, there is an individual who developed a very intriguing relationship with my dog, and I feel like he must have fond memories all these years later. That person was our postal carrier in the mid-1980s when we lived in California.

The man had long, stringy blonde hair, and wore round steel-rimmed sunglasses. He looked almost exactly like the late American poet Richard Brautigan. Our mailbox was attached to a post by the sidewalk. Towser liked to relax on the front porch. When he saw the mailman coming, he would get up, walk down the porch steps, amble up the walkway and then put his front legs up on the picket fence. The carrier taught him how to shake hands, and talked to him in a low, serious sounding voice. I never could make out what he was saying. During the four years we lived there, the man didn't speak a single word to us human occupants. But he got along perfectly with our canine co-habitant.

It seems like National Dog Bite Prevention Week is an appropriate time for me to finally tell this story. If I had to come up with a statement that would accurately and succinctly describe my first dog's exemplary life, it would be this: "He always tried to be cheerful, didn't cause much trouble, and he never, ever, bit anybody."

That's a pretty nice epitaph. I might just have it engraved on MY tombstone.