All Pinked Out

Last week, my beloved cocker spaniel , who was named Christine, died suddenly. We were best friends for 448 years. Our first meeting was as young puppies at St. Peters Catholic obedience school , in what was then Riverside, Ontario. Like other spaniels she was happy, alert,  personable, outgoing and easily maintained. A great companion animal.  And what a companion she was! We had many adventures over the years and found each other to be enormously entertaining.  Our howling laughter is known throughout the land. For the last thirty human  years , as a result of lower long distance rates ,we have spoken every Friday night for a minimum of an hour. History lesson here-before reductions in telephone communication costs,  we used the ancient method of writing letters, and that would be in script handwriting, using stamps, paper, envelopes and sometimes an enclosure of something interesting from the newspaper.  In the present century we would each grab our cigarettes and white wine(the moment the phone rang at 4PM Senor would automatically go and open a bottle of wine (talk about a well-trained dog) and yak about everything including the episode the night before of the show “Back In Time for Dinner” She missed last Thursday which was the 70’s , and will miss this evening about the  80’s , and the thought of us not being able to have our chat about the previous evening show breaks my heart. Our laughter, love of dressing up in matching outfits, envisioning  ourselves the female characters in shows (Think of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Absolutely Fabulous, Frankie and Grace, Beaches, Laverne and Shirley, Lucy and Ethel) Those people who know us can certainly pick out which one of us was which character. We loved chocolate hot fudge sundaes and tuna fish sandwiches from Sanders in Detroit, toast sprinkled with sugar, milkshakes, french fries, pizza, German white wine, and roast beef with yorkshire pudding. I better stop as I can see that our kibble preferences are becoming a really long list. . And newsflash Mr. Donald Trump, we loved to smuggle things from Detroit, especially shoes. It amazed us that DJT was just picking up on that now. Christine was a great cheerleader, especially when I decided to try to blog about my experiences over the last 4 years.  She gave Mike the Bulldog the best blog ever award. Little did we know that my next installment would be about her.

In closing, I will quote part of an essay which has always given Senor and I solace when we have lost a beloved canine friend.

“I ask my Master and Mistress to remember me always, but not to grieve for me too long. In my life I have tried to be a comfort to them in time of sorrow, and a reason for added joy in their happiness. It is painful for me to think that even in death I should cause them pain. ”

Goodbye my dearest Christine. I hope  that I qualify to see you in Heaven, as I have every reason to believe that this is where you are.

PS – Is the food good up there ? Is the wine cold ?