Let me begin by stating the obvious: DOG spelled backwards is GOD. With that said I want to make it clear in no uncertain terms that Man’s Best Friend is God’s way of showing us his unconditional love for us. Love based on nothing but “I am here to love you with all my might, and with every fiber of my body down to my wagging tail which only reflects my heart..’ No judgment is ever made on our looks our place in life, our income, skin color, ambition, education or anything else we tend to judge ourselves by. Utter unconditional love is what they bring to us. They demonstrate trust in us that is nearly impossible to find anywhere else in our lives and their Joy is based on one thing only.. to be by our sides. The goal of our dogs is simply to Please us. I could go on and on but those that have dogs and have come to recognize this gift of joy, humor, companionship and never ending love all wrapped up in a furry ball of sweetness.. already know these things. They are head and shoulders above the rest of God’s animals in character and integrity and honesty that simply goes beyond what we have come to expect as the norm from animals, and unfortunately even the norm of what we have come to expect too often from our fellow man.

My dog Juno was a 135 pound long haired Alaskan Malamute. She would to “talk” to anyone that would listen with her “Whaoooo Whaoooo Woof Woof” low throated way of chatting it up like a stand up comedian. She loved children and even cats and all of the cats she ever encountered, even loved her! I still have a cat that years after her departure shows her grief over Juno’s absence if I bring out Juno’s toys or collar or anything with her smell on it. She whips herself into a frenzy rolling and tossing in what looks like a mixture of a Grand Maul seizure and an orgasm performed on top of anything that has Juno’s scent. Unless I stop her by removing the object that belonged to Juno, she continues with ever increasing vigor to the point where she could harm herself in her display of a recognition of her best friends scent.

I took Juno to a few retirement homes several times, and some of the old people there, that had been catatonic for unknown periods, would come to life with her entrance, and her vocal announcement she would make in the hallways.. “Wahooooo Wahoooo.. Woof” I’m here.. come and let me show you some unconditional love.. and they would so bounce to life to see Juno and touch her and laugh at her antics and humorous ways. She would lick their faces with her huge tongue and their eyes just lit up! It was awesome. I could point my finger at her and say “BANG” and all 135 pounds of her huge self would suddenly fall to her side like a stunt dog in a movie having just been shot, and pretend that she had too just been shot. It delighted the old people and the kids as well.. Wherever she went people greeted her like she was Elvis coming home to Memphis..

When she was ten years old she suddenly got a fast acting lethal form of liver cancer and the vet told me she had about 10 days before it could not be tolerable for her to go beyond. I gave her a solid week of a never ending last meal. Everything you should not give a dog.. Chocolate cake, ice cream, pork chops, water melon, corn dogs, cotton candy, fried chicken, and anything she had ever wanted or could have ever wanted. I took her for rides in my SUV several times every day where she was in heaven with her head out the window and her tongue flapping in the wind.. Oh she loved riding and boy did she know what those car keys meant..

Anyway we arranged for a vet that made house calls to come to our house on the chosen day to put her down. Friends gathered somewhat like a wake to tell her good bye. To hug her and hold her and try to return to her some of the joy and love she gave so easily to all of us. When the time came, I made her lie down on the floor in middle of the living room, and the vet very quietly gave her the injection. As she left us, I held her massive bear like head in my arms and whispered in her ear..
“Good Girl.. Juno is such a good girl”.. and then she was gone.

I cried. We all cried.
I cry now, writing this.

I later came to discover that on that same day, at almost that same moment at a prison somewhere out West, a mass murderer by the name of Timothy McVeigh, was given a lethal injection for the senseless sub human murder of 100’s of Americans in Oklahoma City. I know that outside the prison where he was given his injection, there were many TV crews and satellite trucks all very busy uploading reports to their various networks and agencies.

When I realized that coincidence in timing, it struck me that the TV crews and satellite trucks, and networks were all at the wrong place and covering the wrong story, because the real story was not that piece of garbage tim McVeigh, nor his miserable existence and worthless life, but rather, at least in a sane world, the real story was of the extraordinary best friend of man, our Juno, and her life and what she brought to us that was not havoc and mayhem and death or destruction, but rather the opposite of all of that, and that.. that life that came to an end on that same day and at the same time and by lethal injection even, was a life so giving of love and joy to the world that she overshadowed all the evil around us. And the celebration and acknowledgment of that ending should have been the news of that day.. Those trucks should have been outside on the street in front of my house. But they missed it, like so much else that they miss and that they will never know exactly what it was that they missed.. because she was more human, more wise, more loving, more honest, and had more integrity and a since of value for human life, that simply by her presence made life better for mankind. The death of little timothy McVeigh was not the story.. it was a story.. but it was not THE story.

THE story was of a good Girl.. such a good girl..

Larry from Mississippi