I still miss him terribly.
I don't look for him any more but I do think about him when I get up every morning to let Legal Lucy and that asshole dog Jack out. I remember how he used to be standing at the door, waving that big furry tail and grinning at me when I walked into the kitchen. I started our day by kneeling next to him and rubbing his side, then he'd bump his forehead against mine a couple times. It was a daily ritual.
I remember how I'd be sitting in my chair and he'd come and sit in front of me and lay one of his giant paws on my leg, and if I patted my chest he'd lift up and lay his head on my chest while I stroked him. He loved that as much as I did.
He was a great dog. As rowdy and rambunctious as he was when he was younger, he was every bit as gentle and mellow as he got older. He was one of the only dogs I've had that I trusted completely with other dogs or kids.
CharlieGodammit and a neighbor girl in California
I've thought about him every single day for the last year, but now the thoughts I have of him are good thoughts. For the first month or two after he died, when I thought about him, it was thoughts of me holding his head in my lap as he was dying wishing there was something I could do but knowing in my heart there wasn't. He loved and depended on me as much as I did him, and I failed him at the last. That still bothers me.
I had CharlieGodammit cremated, the only dog I'd ever done that for. My intentions were to take most of his ashes in the spring and spread them on his favorite spots on the property, maybe take a pinch and rub them into the backseat of the truck where he used to lay.
I still haven't done that yet, and I don't know why. His ashes still sit on a small table in the living room in a box that Woody made for him, his collar on top of it.
Maybe next spring, I don't know.
