Jackie

Jackie
This morning my favorite outdoor writer wrote an article about his aging hunting dog.
“An Old Dog’s Last Lap”, see my newspaper link on the left and click on Sam Cook’s article about his beloved dog who is aging. It reminded me of our beloved hunting beagle, Jackie, when I was growing up. Jackie was a beagle we had from the time he was a pup. He became blind and deaf in his old age, he also had trouble walking. He was 15 years old. We loved him. My brothers took extra care with him, knowing that he had trouble seeing and hearing and getting around, and like Sam, they took him along hunting and watched over him.

One winter week, we realized that we hadn’t seen Jackie for a few days. We looked all around, the boys kept their eyes open for him, but Jackie never showed up. We didn’t know where he was. Our Dad said that perhaps he just went off and died. Well, we certainly didn’t’ want to hear that! We loved Jackie and missed him.

Unfortunately, when the spring came, a few months later, one of my brothers discovered what had happened to Jackie. On our neighboring farm across the way there was a pond. In the spring when the ice melted away from the pond, he found Jackie. He was blind, we figured he was walking along and made his way onto the pond, and the ice wasn’t completely strong and he broke through and drowned. We were very sad. The mystery was solved, I guess Dad was right. It was a sad time for us all.