Wednesday, June 19, 2013

You Just Can't Keep a Good Dog Down


Remember when I told you that my dad had to bury the same dead dog twice? (Don't recall? You can take a quick refresher course here.) Anyway, I figure it's about time I fill in the details on that one for you.

When I was growing up, my family had a Pomeranian named Tiki. My dad tried to ignore him, but he eventually caved after Tiki spent a year making it clear that they were going to be the very best of friends. And then he spent the next fourteen years with a fuzzy little twelve pound dog following him everywhere he went.

So he was pretty sad when he eventually had to make the decision to have Tiki put down. Afterwards, he went down to the woods behind the shop where he works and built a little tomb, where he buried Tiki with his favorite tennis ball.

Then, a couple weeks later, Dad got a call from the police station. "Mark, did you bury a dog back behind the shop?"

Now, my dad is a pretty smart guy who I'm sure had a couple of brushes with some petty crime back in his day, so he wasn't about to admit to anything right away. "I'm not sure," he said. "Let me check."

"Well, did you or didn't you?" they asked.

Again he answered, "I'll have to check."

I guess they got tired of going around in circles, so finally they told him to just come down to the station and pick up his dead dog (who was still wearing his collar with our home address and phone number).

It seems a little girl who lived on the edge of town was playing in the woods that day and stumbled upon Tiki's tomb. She opened it up, dragged out the dead dog inside, and brought the carcass down to the police station. (Probably whistling a tune and expecting to get some sort of medal for solving a case as high profile as canine abduction/homicide.)

And so Dad had to go pick up his furry little buddy (who now had considerably less fur, especially around the eyes and mouth), and re-bury him. This time he included an epitaph that read:

R.I.P. Tiki
KEEP OUT!


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