[Note: Last Sunday I shared a bit of this obituary to our dog, Basker, who died a couple of weeks ago. The context was Romans 8 - The whole creation groans... until its liberation from bondage]
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For as long as I can remember Evangeline has loved dogs. She would talk about dogs, draw dogs, read and make-up stories about dogs and take every possible opportunity to walk, play with, or pet a dog. So when we got our own house Elizabeth and I started thinking seriously about getting a dog for Evangeline and Owen. And for ourselves. It was the right time to take that step when Elizabeth came across the ad in the Golden Star:
SEVEN PUPPIES looking for good homes. Lab cross. 344-****. Ready for mid-November
And so we got a dog. A black and tan Lab-X puppy with a white mark on her chest. We named her Baskerville after the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story. We called her Basker for short. The hound in the story was trained to be a vicious killer, but our Basker was nothing like that. She never bared her teeth at any human being (bears were a different story. She “fought” one once and lived to proudly tell the “tail”, strutting around like a victor). She was, from the start, a friendly and happy dog. She loved people. Tiny little children could come to her without fear. Sometimes, friends or relatives sleeping in the guest room would find her sleeping at the foot of their bed in the morning.
Basker loved her family. She loved us the way good dogs do – completely and unconditionally. She was always overjoyed to see us arrive at home and never wanted anything except to be with us and join us in whatever we were up to. She loved the kids so much and was always loyal to them. Is it too much to say that she helped us raise them? When we got her, Owen was only two years old and he would often fall on her or step on her or ride her like a horse. All she would ever do to defend herself is hide under the table when it got a little much. Most of the time she just bravely stuck around to play with him some more. She was very protective of the children. I’ll never forget when Evangeline would swim far away from shore at the cottage. Basker would stand, poised and barking on the edge of the dock, never taking her eyes off of Evangeline until she jumped into the water, swam out to her, grabbed her braids in her jaws and dragged her back to shore. This happened repeatedly. I knew then that our dog was capable of the deepest kind of friendship – laying down her life for her friends. She loved us deeply and unwaveringly. As Gord Atkinson put it “If your dog loves you now, you can be certain your dog will love you next week and next month and next year, all the way until she dies.” That was totally Basker.
We loved her back, in all sorts of ways. Elizabeth was Basker’s favourite petter. When she came home from work Basker would rush to her to be petted vigorously. It had to be for no less than a certain amount of time known only to the dog and when she was satisfied she would wander away, only to come charging back the next time Elizabeth would kneel or sit on the ground to fold clothes or light a fire. Evangeline was her first love, her girl, who taught her to sit and stay and fetch and do all sorts of things. She let her out of the apple crate on the day we brought her home and exclaimed “She’s perfect”. She never wavered in that kind of praise through all the years. Owen was her buddy and I think she may have felt more relaxed with him than with any of us. Their relationship was uncomplicated. They would sit together with Owen watching TV or reading a book and Basker just being there with him, happy to be with her boy. They would simply walk or play or be together. At night she would very often wander into his room to sleep on the floor or on his bed. She often took more space on that bed than he did! Here’s no way to measure the amount of food scraps that passed from Owen’s hand to Basker’s mouth. Could that dog ever beg! As for me I was a bit like the Alpha male of her clan. Respected but, I hope, not feared. I loved tossing the ball for her, usually with a hockey stick or the ball launcher because I’m not fond of slobbery toys! She never quite understood that if I’m shooting a ball with a hockey stick it’s not a good idea to stand three feet in front of me. I called her an ugly dog but always with a smile in my voice. I never meant a word of it and she knew it, wagging her tail and waiting eagerly for the next “compliment”. She was gorgeous.
This morning we said goodbye to Basker. We had known for a couple of weeks that this day was coming and we made sure that those days were lots of fun, just like all the weeks and years before. On Easter Monday she took a last car trip with us to Radium and Invermere. She was so happy to splash her feet in the lake and I’m sure that if I had tossed a stick out she would have plunged after it. Fetching sticks in the water was one of her favourite things. The last few weeks were hard for Basker but she was brave and happy until the very end. Just five minutes before she passed away she was still wagging her tail at us as we patted her and told her that we loved her. She was telling us, one more time, that she loved us too.
There’s a promise in the Bible that I think applies to Basker:
For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when the children of God are revealed. Against its will, all creation was subjected to futility… For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time… But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.(Romans 8:20-22, with the order of the verses rearranged [20, 22, 21] for clarity).
Goodbye Basker. We thank God, your kind Maker, for you.
Go get your ball!
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