An Ode: In Memory of Franklin

This piece first appeared in the Portland Oregonian on September 11, 1925.  It was given to me, framed, as a gift in 1995  in memory of a special patient of mine.  I am now sharing it with you after the passing of a very special dog in my life-Franklin. 

"Where shall I bury my dog?"

There are various places in which a dog may be buried.  I am thinking now of a Australian Shepherd dog, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as I am aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought.  This dog is buried beneath an apple tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the apple will strew petals on the green lawn of his grave.  Beneath an apple tree or a cherry tree or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog.  Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavouous bone, or lifted his head to challenge some strange intruder.  These are good places, in life or in death.  Yet it is a small matter.  For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, nudging, it matters not at all where the dog sleeps.  On a hill where the wind is unrebuked, and the trees are roaring, or beside a lake he knew in puppyhood, or somehwere in the flatness of the farmer's field where most exhilarating cattle graze.  It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost -if memory lives.  But there is one best place to bury a beloved dog.

If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call -come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again.  And though you may call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he belongs there.  People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his foot fall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog.  Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.  The best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.