Miss Sarah's Little Silver Beau - Faithful Companion

Faithful Companion-------------------------------------------------------------
He was just a little sausage of a thing the first time we ever saw him; no more than 4 or 5 inches long looking for all the world like a black, fat, knockwurst with fur. We weren’t allowed to touch him, only look at him. Miss Jean, who ran Foxcroft Kennels, had strict rules about such things, and the fact that you had already paid a healthy sum of money for the little spud did not change anything.
We counted the days until he became six weeks old and drove out to the kennels in Lapeer Michigan to pick up our new “baby.” With the help of Patrick, who always referred to him as his little brother, we named him Beau after General Beauregard of Confederate Army fame. His full kennel name was Miss Sarah’s Little Silver Beau. Miss Sarah had been “with puppy” when we had gone to Jean Buchard looking for an addition to our family, and we could not resist her shy and gentle nature.
Beau turned out to be everything we could have hoped for; regal in appearance, carriage of a champion, and gentle to a near fault. He was smart and trained easily and performed willingly and with enthusiasm on command. Not surprising given that he was from a line of champions – after all, his daddy, Rambo, was a Canadian Grand Champion Toy Poodle.
The thing that stood out the most about Beau however, was that he was never demanding. He never was a dog who pushed in front of others, even when the others were newer dogs to the household. He would stand back, let them have their fill, then eat his food leisurely, as if knowing that there would always be an adequate supply. He endured the foolishness of a couple of puppies appearing on the scene with good nature and never offered to bully them, though he was several times their size. Groomers loved him, for he never offered to be ill and stood with stoic silence in the face of the shampoo, the clippers, the blow dryer and other indignities.
It was perhaps three years ago that he, then at 12 years old, began to fall into declining health. His eyes went dim, then near complete blindness overtook him. Finally one eye simply shrank away. His hearing had gone a year or so before leaving him in a world of his own except for smell, touch, and taste.
The joys of life had nearly gone for Beau when I cleaned the shriveled eye last night, but he was still able to sniff out a jar of peanut butter which stood nearby. He loved peanut butter, and I fingered our a big swab of the stuff and let him eat his fill. Such chewing and smacking you never heard.
Today we allowed him to go to sleep for the last time, and to rest for the ages in the back yard garden under the shade of an althea bush. He was again snuggled up next to Buttons, his companion of ten years, and although there is a giant hole in our hearts and home, we are somehow at peace knowing that he is at rest. The marker reads Faithful Companion.
There are many lessons that could be learned from Beau concerning selflessness, gentleness, self control, and trust. But most of all, the lesson that one could learn from Beau is faithfulness. One could never come through the door or enter the room in which he resided without seeing a frantically wagging tail – saying, “boy I’m glad your home, you are my person and no one else fills my heart like you.”
Patrick had been home from college the summer Beau came to live at our house and the two “brothers” played a game whereby Beau would wiggle underneath Patrick’s tee shirt and work his way up to stick his furry little head our the neck of the shirt. He never forgot and years later when Patrick was married and had kids, Beau would still try to wiggle under his shirt, completely missing the fact that he was now way to big to make that crawl to the neck.
Mark Twain is quoted as saying, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” If heaven went by merit, I’m sure there would be a place for Beau – “Faithful Companion."
Have a blessed day, Bob