news-record.com

I clearly remember watching the TV program “Lassie” as a young child and crying each week when that heroic collie met another of her challenges. She got lost. She rescued poor Timmy. She was injured and lost rescuing Timmy.

And I cried. I cried so much at that TV show that my mother threatened to ban the program in our household. That threat just made me cry more.

It wasn’t that I was an emotional mess as a child. I just identified too closely with that TV dog. You see, we had our own collie — Rusty. He was my parents’ first child and a year older than me, so I literally grew up with that dear dog.

I learned to walk by pulling up on his patient back. He was an outside dog and fearful only of thunderstorms. During those special times, he was allowed inside and slept on the floor by my side of the bed until the lightning, thunder and rain eased.

Rusty and I had a special bond, and when he died, he died in his sleep outside my window. He was 13 and I was 12.

It was the first time I saw my father cry. And the memories still bring tears to my eyes.

I’ve been writing this column since 2000, and the most popular subject of these ramblings has always been my dog, Goldie. I can write about food pantries, noble Eagle Scouts, collards and grits and other common denominators of our bucolic life here in the Piedmont, but hands down, readers have responded most often when I’ve shared stories of Goldie’s antics.

Snaring a very dead and very flat squirrel while on one of her early walks with my husband was one of her most outrageous tricks. My husband, John, never had a pet and was horrified when she picked up the road kill. Regretfully, he tried to pull it out of her mouth. She ended up with the torso of that long-dead squirrel, and John ended up with its tail in his hand.

John was reluctant to walk Goldie for quite a while after that.

During the past couple of years, Goldie slowed considerably, and our walks were limited to one block down the street and back. Some days, even that one block was too challenging, so Goldie simply sat down in the middle of the road and took a break.

Neighbors would chuckle on their drives to work when they saw me trying to coax an 80-pound mound of graying golden fluff into resuming her trek home.

I’ve dreaded telling you what you already must suspect. On Father’s Day, we lost our sweet dog. She was more than 14 years old — at least 100 in people years. She had a long life by big dog standards.

Yes, we cried when we answered that emergency call from our veterinarian, Dr. Ray Coble. We were in Long Island, N.Y., watching our son, Drew, play in the U.S. Open Golf Championship that week. Goldie had suffered a stroke, and none of us wanted her to suffer, so we made the decision to euthanize our beloved dog.

A pure-bred Golden Retriever, a dog designed to retrieve and to love water, Goldie was a mystery to her breed. She didn’t retrieve. We’d throw her a stick, and she would pick it up, plop down and promptly shred it into mulch. Toss her a tennis ball and she’d just look at me as if to say, “You expect me to run after that?”

For reasons we never understood, Goldie was afraid of water. I filled a kiddie pool that first summer to give her a fun place to play. I picked her up and plopped her in the 3 inches or so of water and watched her rocket to the far reaches of the backyard in utter terror.

You would have thought I’d tossed her into the roiling Pacific. She was so scared of the wet stuff that she cried to come inside each and every time she heard the squeak of the outside faucet when we turned it on to water our deck plants.

But a good dog — oh, you’d never find one better. Gentle and patient, she was the perfect pet for our son, Drew. And when my nieces and nephew visited, she was on her best behavior, letting them probe her mouth and nose when they were just curious toddlers fascinated by the anatomy of a dog. She let them pull her plume of a tail, try to ride her and then, eventually, curl up with her for a nap.

The daily walks that started out so tentatively with that dead squirrel were my therapy during the past 10 years. As rheumatoid arthritis threatened my gait, Goldie faithfully accompanied me slowly through the neighborhood when I needed a walking stick to maintain my balance. And after my knee replacement surgeries, it was a milestone in my rehabilitation when I once again put on her red harness and leash and returned to our morning routine.

We debated Goldie’s name for a few weeks after she adopted us in 1995 and finally decided on Good Girl Goldilocks. I wanted to name her Goldilocks and the Three Weavers but was vetoed by my son.

In hindsight, it was the perfect name for a great dog. Yes, we still shed the occasional tear over our second child, but that’s just what you do when you lose a member of the family.

Contact Cathy Weaver at CWeaverNR@gmail.com.