Today a colleague asked me if I wanted another dog.  I told him no.  There was only one Luther. Another colleague, and dear friend we lost in late November 2012, Norm Taylor, used to ask me….how is old Luther?  Norm had read the following column that ran in 2006.  He asked about Luther often.  I post this for Norm and for Luth.

Luther

Don’t be so morbid, my wife, Carrie, will tell me.  I’ll tell her I just can’t help it.  Do the math, honey, I’ll impart.

When the math is complete, the number is 70.  Pro-rated over the course of the year, it’s more like 76.  Translation: my dog is getting old.

His name is Luther.  He was adopted from the Floyd County Animal Shelter in March of 1996.  He was about eight weeks old when we invited him into our home.  The very adoptive act was a minor miracle to me.

I wasn’t too hot on procuring an animal that I would take home and share my environs with.  Animals make particular smells, especially during the housebreaking stage.  I wasn’t thrilled at the prospects of smelling these odors.  In fact, the day Carrie, and our boys Jarrett and Cody, and I went to the animal shelter, I’m not so sure I wasn’t just going through the motions to shut them up without the intentions of really following through with taking a stinky dog home.

Carrie had grown up with a dog around the house.  I had two dogs growing up.  One was a beagle puppy named Rebel.  I loved that dog.  I also remember the disappointment I felt the day my Dad told me Mom ran over Rebel as she was backing out of our garage on her way to work. I was five years old at the time.  Dad went on to tell me Rebel was given a proper burial in the garden.

I still have a picture of Rebel and me.  I cherish it.

Daisy was my other dog.  Another Beagle.  She survived getting hit by a car and wound up on three legs.  She did not, however, survive being hit by the train.  Daisy was a good dog.  I don’t, however, believe intelligence was on her side.

My dog history mattered not when I laid eyes on Luther.  He was ten kinds of pitiful. But did he ever grab my heart when I first looked at him.

Luther is a mutt by some standards and a mixed breed by other standards.  I call him a corgi-retriever.  He has a sawed off body and the thick build of a corgi and he has a face of a golden lab retriever…or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  I have a picture of Luther laying on the floor of a hallway in our house pinned to my bulletin board at work.  “Man, he’s a big one, isn’t he…” is a comment I got one day.  I went on to explain that Luther is a short dog in a short hallway.  Pictures can be quite deceiving.

In the ten years we have had Luther he has become a celebrity.  Gus Stephenson and I lived in the Briarwood subdivision North of New Salisbury at one time.  To this day Gus asks about Luther often.  Gus, an avid runner I am prone to calling Forrest Gus, was the only one who ever made Luther bark incessantly.  If Gus showed up at the house, Luther would bark.  If Luther saw Gus running down the road, he would bark.  And I’m telling you he would really turn loose.  How anything that small can be that loud I’ll never know.  It got to the point that Gus would call me and let me know when he was going running so I could close the blinds of the bay window.

When I talk to Mick Rutherford on the phone, he lives in Sellersburg and we see each other much less than we ever planned, he will ask how Luther is.  So will so many of my other friends and family, even Aunt Barbara in Jackson, Mississippi.

This year has been a tough one for Luther.  He’s had allergy problems and it really brought him down for a while.  He’s had to take medication and he falls asleep watching the Food Network and he always liked watching that channel.  But, like all of us, he presses onward.

Carrie insists that we will get another dog when Luther is gone.  And I mean the word “insist” in the calmest of connotations.  But, man, I just don’t know.  I don’t want to think about life without Luther.  Mealtimes would be lonely without him hovering below the table working each of us over until he gets a scrap.  And I don’t think I’m quite prepared to not have to watch my step in the yard.

Carrie also nixed my idea of having Luther stuffed when he gives out.  She didn’t think that was very reasonable.  In the meantime, I’ll just watch my step in the yard and love every minute of it.

P.S.  Luther died on September 5th, 2010 on the Sunday before Labor Day.  It was a good thing Carrie and I had Monday off.

This is one of the last photos ever taken of old Luther.  I miss him.

He would speak…or at least bark…the rights.

Danny Johnson