We had to put Sparky down the Friday before our trip to Kansas City for my grandmother’s 100^th birthday celebration.  More about that later but due to the trip, I wasn’t able to really begin grieving.  This week I have really missed him.  These past mornings when I was cutting my banana for my cereal, I thought of him because he would always run into the kitchen in recent months when he stopped eating because I would give him the end of my banana so he would eat something.

It was so quiet when we did the garbage on Sunday because he would always try and steal things from our baskets as we emptied them.  Most times he succeeded and we discovered chewed up Kleenex and food wrappers everywhere. Whenever we came home, he would greet us at the door with his happy bark and a smile on his face.  I never realized that dogs could actually smile until Sparky. 

I’m feeling a little sick to my stomach which I attribute to him not being here.  I loved that little guy even if he was sometimes a pain.  I walked him every morning to get his energy out and sometime in the nine months before we got him, someone taught him to walk on a lease.  When I walked him, I felt a little like I was in a dog competition in the healing category because he was spectacular.  In fact, someone in the neighborhood posted on my Facebook page that we were an institution on Haywood road since we always walked there.

When he was little I used to meet my friend Sarah and her dog at the park.  We would let them run and play in the baseball diamond but as time went on, signs went up saying we couldn’t do that.  We often did it anyway cleaning up after our dogs of course.  Sparky had so much energy and he would run around that diamond like a crazy person. 

I remember how he would always find a way out of our yard.  Sometimes he would run out the gate when we had it open.  Other times he found holes in the fence and would sneak out through them.  I don’t know how many times I went through the neighborhood calling out his name with treats in my hand. 

He did have a bad habit of biting.  He wasn’t mean and I’m not sure I understand why he was that way.  I know he was taken from his mother too early so he never developed as ‘soft bit” like other dogs.  I couldn’t give him treats or he would chomp off my hand.  I learned to put the treat in the palm of my hand and let him get it that way.

I suspect he was abused by one of his first families in some way which is why he would bite.  I learned that all dogs bite it’s just they have different levels of anger.  Many dogs never get to their upper level but Sparky got there often.  He bit Michael and I several times when we had to go to urgent care.  The urgent care people were required to report it and animal control would always come and tell us he had to be quarantined for a week.  There was no way I could do that since he had too much energy.  I walked him anyway and just hoped no one caught me. 

We used to take him to doggie day care because he needed to diffuse some of his energy.  He loved going there and the staff loved his crazy attitude.  He was the kind of dog one either loved or hated.  We could tell the first vet didn’t like him much so we found a new vet named Dr. Heath at All Pets. He appreciated him and he verified for us that he really was a smart dog.  He said you really don’t want a smart dog because they figure things out all the time and you have to stay one step ahead of them.

If you’ve gotten this far, please forgive the length of this post.  I really loved that crazy dog and it helps to write about him.  I felt guilty for putting him down since it seemed early but I realized later that we gave him his dignity.  He was skin and bones and the only time he got excited was when we were in the kitchen.  I think he wanted to eat but it hurt too much.  If we had waited longer, he would have become incontinent and miserable. 

This may seems like heresy for a minister to make the following comment, but I’m not sure I believe in a physical heaven.  Scripture doesn’t say much about it and the little bit there is, can be interpreted to mean different things.  So what do I believe about death?  I think it’s a place where all the souls of animals and people live.  It’s a spiritual place.  I believe that is where Sparky and my other dog, Abu has gone.  They are with the many other people and animals that have died before them.

I’m, still grieving for Sparky and I probably will for a long time.  I think Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was a little off when she put grief into set stages.  Grief is a coil and we keep going through that coil, experiencing the many different stages, over and over again.  I will never finish grieving for Sparky, just like folks never stop grieving for their loved ones.

And that’s okay.