My adult daughter called her mother the other day, tearful and emotional, to tell her that her family dog, Taz, had passed away. Later that day I was with my wife and she told me of the sad event. Taz had not been feeling well for several days and that night they had put him in his bed, and the next morning they found him dead. We, too, had known Taz for some 10 years, since he was a puppy. As we talked about the event and how bad our daughter’s family felt about it, we, too, commenced to shed a few tears. Our family has always had pets and with only one or two exceptions, they all died of old age. They have been, and are, important members of our family. They each have their own individual personalities, whether the pet be a cat or a dog. Dogs are always affectionate and cats are when they feel like it. They say a family owns a dog but a cat owns a family.
I well remember my first dog, I brought a stray mongrel home when I was about eleven years old. I started feeding it scraps from our table and he stayed with me as a best friend for many years. He was about half grown at the time we met. It was during my fifth year in school and I remember that World War II was still going on. Every once in awhile a U.S. military convoy would be seen going through the streets of our city. I had a fascination with the Army Jeep. I spent a great deal of time in class drawing pictures of jeeps and airplanes. Maybe at this point, you can guess what I named my first and very own pet. You are right, his name became Jeep. Jeep slept on my bed, ate my food (I don’t believe they even sold dog food in 1944-45) and he went everywhere I went. When school was out, Jeep would be waiting for me at the schoolhouse door. He would run alongside my bike as I rode all over the neighborhood. He provided a certain amount of humor for my friends and me. One time we were riding our bikes along a tree lined avenue in Spokane, Washington with Jeep running alongside. It so happened that two men were standing on the sidewalk talking and Jeep ran up on the sidewalk and stopped where the two men were and lifted his leg on one of the men’s pant leg. We talked and laughed about that for years. Wherever I was, there was Jeep, my constant companion. Jeep had one bad habit that I could never break him of, he loved to chase cars and sometimes bite at their tires if they were going slow enough. I mentally ratio- nalized one time thinking that Jeep may have thought that cars coming toward us on the street may possibly be a threat to me. One day a car came along and, true to form, Jeep took out after it, only this time, the thing that I was always afraid of happened. Jeep was run over and killed. I remember running to the street and picking him up in my arms and with tears streaming down my face I carried him home. I was actually mad at him and I cursed him with every swear word that I could bring to mind. All that I could think of was that he had done a stupid thing, now he was dead and he wouldn’t be with me any more. My sorrow could not have been more deep if the dead body in my arms had been my little brother. After all, they were both members of my family.
I missed Jeep so much, I missed his licking my face, jumping up on me with muddy paws and being there for me 24-7, as they say today. I missed his being curled up in the bend of my knees as we slept through the night. We were pals, he loved me as only a dog can love and I loved him as only a boy could love. Like farm animals the only time he got a bath was when we had a good rain. He would look so clean and fluffy after he dried off.
I don’t believe I feel much different about every pet that we have had as a family since that time. When our kids have brought home a new pet I have hesitated letting them keep them. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to start a new relationship with a new pet because I knew how much it hurt when they go away. I don’t believe that our children ever understood my hesitancy, a hesitancy that was rooted in the loss of a little dog named Jeep.
As an old man serving at a local family history center, every month I teach a one hour class on ‘Writing Your Personal History.’ One of the issues that often comes up is whether pets should have an important place in one’s history. I am one who believes that pets do have an important place in a family’s history. I also happen to believe that we will have them in the hereafter. That will sound silly to many, but if you have loved pets as my family has you would believe heaven’s abode would be missing part of the family without them. Too, our descendants would be deprived of an important part of our history without a description of our beloved pets and the affect they had on the lives of our family members. The 77th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants #3, states that all forms of life will come up in the Resurrection, “… in their destined order or sphere of creation, in the enjoyment of their eternal felicity.” I believe that that scripture tells me that we will have our pets in the hereafter. After all, our pets are/were part of the family too. Pets have a divine nature for as someone has said: “To Err is human; To forgive is canine.”