good dog.

It’s been several days since I’ve blogged---I usually don’t go this long without writing--but with this, I thought I’d wait a few days before I posted anything.

Jonathan’s family dog died suddenly on Sunday afternoon. No prolonged illness, no unfortunate accident. He just slipped away for reasons unknown. We are all baffled by this since he was only six years old and was running, sniffing, and playing normally just a few hours before.

Henry, March 2006

My husband called me with this shocking and sad information while I was at work Monday morning. I was well on my way to a horrible day anyway since it was my first day back from vacation. That shift is always the worst. Anyone who saw me on the phone at that moment probably would have thought at worst, a beloved grandparent had died or at best, my little gray kitten. Not the hunting dog owned by my mother and father-in-law. I mean, he wasn’t even my dog. But whenever I was there, it felt like he was. I can not imagine how upset Jonathan’s folks are, so I won’t even try. They couldn’t even bring themselves to call us with the news until almost a day after the fact.

Henry. I didn’t much care for the name when they got him, but over time, it seemed to fit. We began to refer to any weimaraner as a “Henry Dog”. He was spoiled immediately. Weimaraners have big, clumsy feet when they are pups and their ears overpower their little gray heads; Jonathan calls this the “ear-to-snout ratio”. Adorable. Guess that’s why you see them photographed frequently.

Oh, he loved riding on the 4-wheeler, March 2005

Part of why Henry’s passing is so sad and painful is because he was such an important part of the culture of my husband’s family. When I was a senior in college, I had to make a slideshow of something that represented the concept of home to me and I chose Henry the dog. My parents sold my childhood home in 1999, so Jonathan’s house embodied that concept more than my folks’ new place. Why Henry? I guess you could say that he was the center of much of the action around there. He would sit at the back door trying desperately to look pathetic so someone would let him inside. He was big and powerful enough to catch a hummingbird in flight. He would howl--in perfect fifths, I’m told--while Jonathan played his trumpet in the living room. So I photographed him just being himself. I played that slideshow for my class to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s High Hopes. Henry always had high hopes of getting whatever it was that he wanted. Usually that would involve eating off the table, flopping on the couch or bed next to you, or just being a nuisance in general. Wherever he is now, I hope that’s what he doing.

That’s Henry in a nutshell. Or at least it’s my version. We all have stories about him we could tell, memories that won’t make us laugh for quite some time. I suppose we were all hoping that we’d have several more years of Henry memories to create, but that wasn’t meant to be. The past six years will have to do.

Lay down, Henry. Good boy.