This is the image of our dog, Jo, I want to remember. I'd rather not remember the hobbled gait, difficulty navigating stairs or wretched hacking she endured the last months of her life. In fact, the day this photo was taken was one I hold in my heart for several reasons. Let me set the scene...
The glass on our storm door broke and we didn't get it repaired for a couple of months. One of Jo's daily joys was going out to fetch the morning newspaper and after the glass broke she discovered she could simply leap through the opening not having to wait for the door to open, retrieve the paper, and zip back into the house--sticking a perfect landing in the narrow front hallway worthy of an Olympic athelete.
As the weeks went by that summer, Greg challenged Jo with retrievals of toys, shoes, training dummies... Whatever he threw out the door she happily found and returned to him with boundless enthusiasm and not a small amount of pure pride as she practically flew through the opening of the storm door--always clearing it with inches to spare and landing like a...well, a cat.
One evening my parents and my Aunt Willa came over for dinner. After dinner, we had Jo do some tricks for them--like finding a training dummy wherever we hid it in the house. But the piece-de- resistance was her door trick. We pushed the folks' chairs to one side of the door so they had a good view. Then Greg threw a small pink ball out into the front yard and had Jo retrieve it. Jo performed flawlessly flying over the door with the ball in her mouth and stopping on a dime in the front hall. I can still see my Aunt clapping her hands with glee and hear her saying, "This is better than watching the circus." Even my dad was laughing at her antics. Much to their continued delight, Jo leaped in and out of the door many times that night and seemed to have a smile on her face each time. Wish that I could relive that night and see all their smiling faces again!
Just a stupid pet trick some might say. Now that Jo is gone and her appreciative peanut gallery, too, I like to think of that evening as the time the circus came to Cheyenne Lane. Jo might have been the runt of her litter, but there was nothing small about her heart or her star quality. She touched everyone who knew her.
January 05, 2012
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