If a dog be well remembered
(written by Ben Hur Lampman & published in the Sept. 11, 1925 issue of the Portland
Oregonian)
We are thinking now of a dog, whose coat was flame in the sunshine and who, so far as we
are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This dog is buried beneath a
cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals
on the lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree or an apple or any flowering shrub of the
garden is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept
in the drowsy summer or gnawed at a flavorous bone or lifted head to challenge some
strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death.
Yet it is small matter. For if a dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your
dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where the dog
sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees roaring, or beside a stream he
knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating
cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is
lost -- if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you
when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-
remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel
they shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at
you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people
who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is
hidden from them, and which is well worth knowing.
The one best place to bury a dog is in the heart of his master.
(This was sent to us by the Heideman Family - some of Behr’s many friends)
Have a look at Behr run through his paces in Test C