Where To Bury A Dog

There are various places in which a dog may be buried. 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 tree strews petals on the green lawn of his grave.

Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorful bone, or lifted his 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 as 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 pasture land where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost — if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog.

If you will 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, 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 dog is in the heart of his master.

From a Portland Oregonian editorial by Den Iiur Lampanon
In response to a subscriber’s Letter to the Editor asking
"Where shall I bury my dog?"