On tomorrow morning, August 2, at 9:30 AM, Laurie and I are taking Fred to the vet for the very last time.
We are losing one of the best friends that we ever had. Fred (also known as Frederico Alanzo Luigi Puchini, the Marquis de Salamanca, and the Caliph of Cuteness) was the best dog ever and the very first dog that Laurie has ever loved.
I have had, over the years, many pooches. There was Rouge, when I was a baby, and then the beagle, Duke, and then Crackers who, like Fred, was also a retriever - although a female one that could catch a frisbee on the jump - and then Little Buddy, in Phoenix, along with Daizy-Head-Mazy-Doodles Oodles-of-Noodles Loomish, a rug-rat.
Come Friday morning they will all be gone with the sole exception of Little Schnorrbert.
What can anyone say about this kind of thing? We all lose friends and family and pooches, eventually.
I do think that it is important to mark this moment, because Fred, unlike Marley, was the Best Dog Ever.
I like to tell the anecdote about the time that I was walking Fred and Snort outside of our apartment on Baker Street in San Francisco, in the central Haight. A gentleman happened by and he stopped for a moment to say something like, "Oh, cute pooches." I said to him, "This is Fred, he's the sweet one. And this is Snort, he's the cute one." Without missing a beat the guy says to me, "And together they fight crime!"
Fred has been with Laurie and myself since we moved to Pensylvannia in the late summer of 2001. At the time we were living in an off-campus apartment and agreed to get a small dog, because it's important to always have pooches, when you can. Needless to say, Laurie was seduced by Fred, who is not a small dog.
Fred saw a sucker coming with forty dollars in her pocket and said to himself, "How's the chow at your joint, I wonder?"
We loved Fred very much and we will miss him terribly.
