A dogs life Commentary by Dr. A. O. Goldsmith I lost one of my best friends eight years ago. He was my constant companion for 16 years and it has now been long enough for me to write about Beau, a chocolate brown French poodle. Yes, he was a dog, but I remember him not as a dog but as a person. The dictionary says a person has the personality of a human being, and that was what made Beau a person as well as a dog. We got Beau in Florida, the son of a poodle that belonged to our daughter, Sarah Sue. He was six weeks old when we brought him to Missouri and he was a member of our family for 16 years. We have had other dogs but Beau became my dog because I am retired and he was with me almost all the time. He helped me with everything I did, especially in the yard and garden. He liked to drink from the garden hose. When I planted rows of beans or radishes, he sometimes walked on the rows. After the plants sprouted, however, he was careful to walk between the rows, He also chased squirrels and rabbits away from the garden. He loved to eat radishes and I would partly pull one up and let him pull it up the rest of the way and eat it. He also liked gooseberries but I had to pick them for him because the thorns pricked his nose when he tried to get them. Some other dogs may be as smart as Beau was, but he understood well over a hundred words, such as gate, kitchen, back door, squirrel and such sentences as Run around and around. He would run full speed around the flowerbeds. I didnt have to exercise him by walking him on a leash. He was friendly with people and also with other animals. After he was grown, we took him with us to visit Sarah Sue in Florida. She had rescued a newborn deer named Peanuts and had taken care of him until he was old enough to go back to his normal habitat. Beau and Peanuts became close friends and enjoyed romping among the trees and tall grass. The stables were a couple of hundred yards from Sarah Sues house and there was a cat that lived and caught mice in the stables. She had never come to the house until we had Beau there. She fell for Beau and followed him around, which seemed to embarrass him, but he was polite and endured the cats company. He understood when I told him to bark. One day I was up on the back porch roof cleaning leaves out of the gutter when the wind blew over the ladder that was leaning against the metal gutter. The porch roof was too high for me to jump down. Beau was watching me and had seen the ladder fall. I said Bark, Beau. Josephine was in the back bedroom at the far side of the house. Beau went to the open window of the bedroom and began barking until she came to the back door to see what he was barking at. She wrestled the extension ladder to the roof edge and I climbed down. One winter during a snowstorm, someone left the gate open and Beau wandered out. I discovered he was gone and found him outside the back wire fence, shivering in the snow. I couldnt reach him over the 4-foot fence so I said, Stand up, Beau. He put his front feet up on the fence so I could reach him and lift him over the fence. When he was 12 years old, he developed cataracts on his eyes and could barely see. We took him to the LSU Veterinary School in Baton Rouge and a surgeon removed one of the cataracts, which restored some of his vision. The veterinarian called me and said Id have to come and get him. I took him to our daughters home and he let me put the drops in his eye. A couple of years later Beau began to go downhill physically and mentally, much like Parkinsons' and Alzheimers' sufferers. He got to the point where he couldnt see, couldnt hear, didnt know us or where he was. He couldnt go up or down steps without tumbling down. He felt his way along the walls and once became wedged behind the refrigerator. He would fall over while walking. At that point I made the most difficult decision of my life. I talked to Dr. Everett Mobley, who had taken care of Beau almost all his life. Nothing could be done for him, so he was put to sleep by lethal injection while I held him. Everett asked if I wanted him to dispose of the body. I told him No. I brought Beau home and buried him at the back of his garden. I have kept the small mound covered with moss.