Most Inspirational Dog
Friday, October 30th, 200910/30/09
The Missus and I just love dogs. If we’re walking down the sidewalk and a dog on a leash comes our way, she’s immediately down on her knees with a big grin on her face as the dog approaches usually wagging away happy to see her.
Living in NYC we don’t own one. It’s one of the great disappointments of my adulthood. Too rough on the dog. We travel too much. Too busy to walk one properly. And then there’s the leash…
The lot of dogs today has become unfortunate. When I was a kid, dogs roamed free in my neighborhood. They all hung together and we kids knew them all by name. Roaming free was never any trouble. Occasionally you might hear of a dog bite, but not nearly as often as you’d hear of a people fight.
I was 6 years old sitting on the living room floor with my brother, Jim, after opening presents around the tree late Christmas morning with my back to the door. I remember looking up into Jim’s astonished face as he looked up behind me. As I turned around, there was my father standing in the doorway holding a 6 week old collie puppy in his arms.
What ensued was a burst of joy yet unheard in the Link household. We got a dog!!!
Our first dog became our only dog and eventually, the only dog of my life. Rusty, as we named him, lived with us, played with us, ate with us, protected us and died with us over the span of 16 years. He was my first friend. He was simply one of the family. Mom and Dad’s kids were named Jim and Peter and Rusty.
He was kind. Now you normally don’t think of dogs as kind, but Rusty was. One day Fritz, who couldn’t stop chasing cars finally got hit by one in the street right out in front of our house. We were disturbed from lunch by the honking of horns in our normally quiet and uneventful suburban neighborhood. As we a rushed to the front door and looked out, there stood a line of cars about 10 deep – a virtual traffic jam for our quiet Briargate Lane. All of the cars were stopped and honking away impatiently.
