Phoebe's Meadow

A dog’s life is like a shooting star, so bright and beautiful that it fills your heart with joy and love, even if only for a short time.

She fit in the palm of my hand when she was only six weeks old.  I held her there, the first time, watching in awe as the amazingly beautiful furry little puppy stretched her arms like Supergirl.  She did that often, as we came to realize later.  She stretched constantly, and when we held her up, she stretched to the horizon.  She had always wanted to fly.  That’s why we named her Zephyr.  Phoebe Zephyr was our little girl.

She was our first puppy together.  My wife and I named her Phoebe, because it was the most beautiful name we knew, and also what we would have named a daughter if she would have been born at that time.  The name turned out to suit our little puppy well, and everywhere she went, people loved her name.  Phoebe was our furry baby, and nobody could ever question how much she meant to us, or how much we loved her.

We loved her like a child, and she was feisty like one too.  She threw tantrums sometimes, like when she stopped a soccer game to chase the soccer ball that she couldn’t play with –even though she tried her hardest.  She barked until we found her another one to play with.  She loved the beach, and she loved eating ice cream, once spending an entire afternoon licking it off of her nose.  She loved the drive-ins and the wind going through her hair when she hung out the window for a car ride.  Mostly though, she loved spending all of her time taking naps on Mommy or Daddy’s lap.  It was her favorite thing to do, and ours as well.

We took her everywhere with us too.  We took her on trips in cars and airplanes to different places, near and far.  We took her to Vegas with us and we all stayed in a dog friendly hotel, but we were so worried about her that we kept leaving the gambling strip to check on her.  She even went to Canada with us once too, riding underneath our seat on the airplane.  Of all the places though, we always had a favorite.  It was our meadow.  Phoebe, Mommy, and I always dreamed of a meadow together.  It was a meadow of golden grass that swayed gently with the wind.  The meadow was on a small hill where bunnies would play, where we could sit and read books on a blanket and play with a ball, eating apples and different treats all afternoon until the lazy sun set. 

We dreamed of our meadow many times.  It is the place that we have all promised to meet at when our time here is up.  It is there that I will come running, looking for my baby, Phoebe, when my time is up, because she will already be there.  I hope that she knows to play with the bunnies, and if a big Golden Retriever should come upon her, that she should play with him and accept his friendship, for he is my old dog.  He waits too.  Until then, my furry babies, please take care of each other.  Daddy will be there soon enough.  I promise that we will play fetch and eat treats in the meadow, while the zephyr blows over us gently.  I promise.