BIS/BISS CAN/AM CH Sandpiper's Blockade Runner CD, CGC

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Well, this is by far the most difficult Dog of the Month I have ever had to write. Today we laid to rest my best friend and constant companion for 12 years – Harry. "H" had started a slow slide downward last December and although he rallied long enough this past month to go on one last fishing trip to the North Shore, his eyes of late told me it was time and so, bathed in our tears, we put him to sleep with his grandchildren "Olli" and "Aussie" and his mate "Cricket" by his side.

"H" had an amazing life. He came to us when he was 8 months old from Janice Beattie's Sandpiper Kennels. Once I figured-out how to groom all his coat, he finished his Canadian and American titles with ease and went on to become one of the top conformation Gordon Setters in Canadian history. "H", or I should say "H"'s coat, was the reason I developed Duurstede Grooming Products while showing him in 73 shows during 1992. As a sire, he produced many spectacular litters not only in North America but also in Australia and New Zealand. But most of all, he was my "H". Always a gentleman – always under control...his keen yet soft demeanour was, in my opinion, the finest example of Gordon temperament I have ever seen.

So I bid you a fond farewell my dear, dear friend...I'll bring coffee and bread to "The Bridge" when we meet again...

"The Best Place to Bury a Dog"
- or -
"If a Dog Be Well Remembered"

We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree or an apple or any flowering shrub of the garden is an excellent place to bury a good dog.

Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer or gnawed at a flavorous bone or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder.

These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter. For if the dog be well-remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where the dog sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost - if memory lives.

But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call - come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again.

And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they shall not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.

The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.

From the Portland Oregonian, September 11, 1925. By Ben Hur Lampman

Earlier Dogs of the Month

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Golden Retriever	Golden Retriever	Maltese
Bearded Collie	English Setter	Rough Collies
English Setter	Coton de Tuléar	Holiday Gordons
Gordon Setter	Irish Setter	The Torrez Clan

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