Elly

Our beagle-terrier mix died this past week, old and full of years--17 to be exact. She was a good dog, though temperamental and stubborn. As a youngster, she astounded us all when she rewarded my attempts at training (coached faithfully by my mother) by winning reserve champion at the 4-H dog obedience show. She continued to [usually] sit on command, but everything else pretty much fell by the wayside.

She delighted a little girl who longed for a puppy, joyously accompanied long and pleasant traipsings through my grandpa's woods, and was the most vocally conversational dog I have ever met--sporting quite a vocabulary of groaning commentary during belly rubs and ear scratchings. These vocalizations pretty much ceased as she grew deaf, so they must have been in response to our voices not our hands.


Her old years seemed to me a commentary on creatureliness--on the limits and needs that bind all created things in a fallen world, and even on the necessity for a better master than I.