It was if it was fate. We had just lost a good dog to a hunting accident, and mom was devastated. Dad hated seeing our long faces everyday because we needed a dog again. One night, he was late coming home from work. My mom called, asked him where he was. He said, "I have a surprise for you... oh no no no! don't do it... dang it... your surprise just took a dump on my van floor." My mom freaked, threw the phone in the air and ran through the house yelling "We're getting a PUPPY!!!"
We all anxiously awaited the arrival of our new dog, not knowing what kind it would be. My dad pulled up, and brought out the strangest floppiest looking puppy I had ever seen. When he set her down, I looked in wonder at her big old paws, long ears nose and body, and wondered, what is it? I asked my dad, and he said, "she's a beagle basset hound, but shes definatly got more basset in her. I was looking around the shelter and was seeing some cool dogs, but when I came up to this ones cage, she looked at me with those droopy eyes, and I was hard pressed not to say no. And when I asked the man showing me around about her, he said, yea, she's been here for a few months and she's supposed to be put down tomorrow because we are running out of room and nobody wants her." My dad said he couldn't let that happen, and so our family then had Cleo.
I remember watching her run when she was a puppy, tripping over her long ears and doing somersaults, then getting back up and doing it all over. How her ears would dangle into her water bowl and she would soak us after she was done drinking.
I grew up with Cleo. Everyday after school I'd get off the bus and find her moping around the hard. But every time she saw up she come up whining with happiness like we had been gone for days and not hours. I was a different child. I didn't fit in, I wasn't popular, and I didn't have a lot of friends. But when I got home everyday, that didn't matter. I had my Cleo.
She was a camping dog. We'd go camping every weekend during the summers of my childhood, and she would make sure we never forgot her, like we ever would. As soon as we would start packing up the truck, she would hike her long body up into the cab of the truck and wait.
That dog had more tears on her shoulders than anything in this world. Not just from me, but from the whole family. She was our saving grace. During the very rough divorce of my parents when I was 12, Cleo was the only thing that stayed the same. Always there when we needed her. Even though most of the time, she stunk to high heavens, because living out in the woods, you can find a lot of dead animals. Cleo loved them. She loved dragging them up to the yard and rolling in them for hours. And when she found one she was particularly found of, no matter how hard my dad tried to get rid of it, we could always see her the very next day rolling in the same thing.
For fourteen years, that dog saw a lot of good and a lot of bad, but she was always the same. Always making sure we were ok, waiting patiently for us to cry it out on her black and white fur.
Cleo was a selfless dog, you could see it in every move she made and look she gave. And even in the last months of her life, she was still the same. As the cancer raged through her body, making her thinner and thinner, she was still same old Cleo. Putting her humans before her own pain, making sure we were ok.
I remember that last day. My dad was getting ready for work and as he walked outside, Cleo came up to him to say goodbye, just like everyday. My dad knelt down to pet her, tell her he loved her, and said, "I'll see you later, Cleo." But the look she gave him was clearly, "No... you won't."
When he came home that night, he asked us where Cleo was. We said we hadn't seen her all day and we were getting worried.
For three nights, my father searched the woods, called all of our neighbors, and wouldn't come back until midnight, when he was usually in bed by 8. After those three days, my stepmom finally told him that she was gone.
We realized that Cleo was just as selfless in her death as she was in her life. She walked far away to die alone, so that we wouldn't have to see the pain she was in.
Cleo was the best dog any family could've ever asked for. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of my floppy-eared mutt. A picture on my refrigerator reminds me everyday that she is still with me any time I need her. I know she's at the bridge, young and happy, rolling around on her favorite dead thing, waiting for us to take her across that bridge to go camping...
I have a dog of my own now that i have moved out of my parent's home. Albert, a fat lovable goof, that I say is the greatest dog in the world. And to me, its true, because Cleo is watching me from the bridge and someday all three of us will be there together.
I love you Cleo. You were and always will be the greatest dog our family could ever have.