CityView Magazine

8 | March 2020 So, when I headed into the house to shower and dress for work, she headed to the corn to look for Br'er Fox. I swear, I think they were pals. One aernoon last September, when the days were still longer than my time at work, I drove down to the big pen in the backyard to let Summer out to come to the house to eat. She was standing as far away from the gate as she could be in a full-on classic English setter point, with her nose stuck through the chain link. "You love a rabbit, don't you?" I asked, presuming that was what she saw. But when I spoke, it startled her companion and he ran away. Much to my surprise then and even now in the telling of it, it was the red fox. ey had been standing nose to nose, as if speaking quietly in two dialects of dog talk. Her hours in the corn patch were spent by her with that same calm demeanor. She was not frantic. In fact, she did not really seem to be hunting. It was more like she was reading a newspaper with her nose. She would first ease around the perimeter and when a headline smelled out a "is way!" she would turn into the yellowed stalks and disappear from view. I eventually put a folding chair in the old horse barn, and I would sit with an ale in the aernoon sunset and watch her piece together with her nose what had happened that day in the corn while she slept. By 7:30 that morning, when I was dressed and coffeed and ready to cross the river for the day, I got a half a cup of dry food and mixed in a little Alpo with it. I banged the side of the food bowl, hoping she would hear it. My wife Susanna had come into the driveway from the back porch just as I came out of the garage to look for Summer. I saw Summer lying on her stomach under the bluebird box in the middle of the short pines. "Look at her," I said to Susanna. Susie kind of laughed and said, "at is an odd place for her to lie down." Susie went inside the house. I fetched the food bowl and started out to where she was prone on the ground. As I got closer, I could see that she had her head between her front paws and her eyes were closed. I yelped to her in the only high pitch she could still barely discern. No response. en, I just knew. It hit me that the dog days of Summer were over. I fell to the ground and I remember saying, "Oh no." She was unconscious. Breathing rapidly. Wet from what was her last fox hunt in the soaked corn. "Wait," I pleaded to her. I ran to the garage just as Susanna came back outside. "Summer is dying." I ran back with the bed that I had bought her as a Christmas present. I had on heavy cowboy boots, and they sank past the heels as I ran through the saturated ground to my little old girl who would rise no more. I lied her onto the soness and carried her and the bed inside to the utility room where it was warmer. When I got her in the house, I got on the floor with her, and could think of nothing to say or do except to put my fingertips in her ears – her most loved caress – and I just kind of cried. She did come around a bit. She looked for me through the cataracts and the cloud of approaching death. I don't think she saw me, but I do think she knew it was me. She seemed to relax some, but she was laboring. My wife and son watched from across the room, saying nothing – nothing to say. All of those miles we rode to Bird Dog School in Bunnlevel when she was a girl; to Kansas twice and Oklahoma once for wild quail; three times in the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia for ruffed grouse; the wild coveys in Granville and Pender and Bladen counties; woodcocks along Tranter's Creek in Pitt County; the quail preserves at Augusta Farms and Wintergreen Farms. How she made me laugh as she fished so seriously with me for cane-pole brim on the bank of the ponds at Franklin's or at Jimbo's. How she used to leap straight up in the air over and over when I would come home in the aernoon. How that heifer would have to decide every time whether or not to come when I called. How her teeth chattered audibly when she knew I was coming to let her out. And how, when I would lay in the green grass, she would lay down not next to me, but rooted all over the top of me. She could not get close enough to ever be satisfied. I buried her under the Japanese persimmon in the backyard. e ground was saturated and so, and I dug very deeply. I carried her broken little body to the hole, still using the Christmas bed as her cradle. I stepped belt deep down into the hole and gentled her in with me. She looked so pretty. So sleepy. So sweet. I could not bear the thought of putting the clay in her face, so I went to the doghouse, got that blanket, and covered her with it. en I did what had to be done, ending with a mound of dirt shaped a little like a dog sleeping on a bed. I have developed a sort of whimper that escapes, barely audibly, when I am alone and when I think of her. A buddy half-heartedly offered me a rescue dog of his. I told him that I had to learn to live alone for a little while in that part of my soul. He said, "I get that." February 7, 2020 was the last day of Summer. I have no profundities in me worth sharing other than the events of the day. I can say this – I sure loved that gal. And now, the dog days of Summer are over.

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