5/24/16 journal entry

Three weeks since we took Bubba to the Animal ER and paid $$$ to have him euthanized. I have his picture everywhere: on my phone’s lock-screen, as my iPad’s wallpaper, in my office, on my Facebook page. And I imagine I can smell his sweet doggy paws and fondle his soft floppy ears. Although he hadn’t done it in the last couple of weeks of his life, I hear his basset howl when I open the garage door. His greeting. Drool dried on the walls, mopboards, bathroom scale, kitchen appliances, crown molding around doors to the outside. To freedom. To roam the neighborhood, marking the trees, the bushes, the signposts, the rocks, the hydrants, the circle of walking that narrowed from a circumnavigation of the golf course to a leash walk around the tennis courts to a neighborhood stroll to a shuffle to the corner, across the street and back to his front yard. A closing circle, a tightening spiral, a looping inward to his last few steps in the grass. Breaths of grass. Then carried inside and laid on his bed.

https://visitantlit.com/2018/05/15/bubba/ – but his picture should be first