Working clockwise, and starting at seven o’clock, you’ve got the older Son, Interrupted, the younger Daughter, Interrupted, one of the first Friends, Interrupted, the older Daughter, Interrupted, and then there’s Tanner.

This picture was taken after he arrived at our home.

Tanner was free to a good home, from a family we knew at the kids’ school.

The wife adored that dog; the husband, not so much. I do not understand what planet that man came from, because I don’t see how you couldn’t like Tanner. He was everything you know about golden retrievers, and then some. One of my enduring memories: I wake up at least once a night to go to the john. I would work through the dark to the loo, and while I sat there a gigantic head would appear to keep me company. Some nights I still look for him.

When Tanner left for the Rainbow Bridge I had to write about him. The resulting column is one of my favorites, but watch out: it made one of my co-workers, a retired Army officer who brooked no nonsense, weep like a baby.

Eleven years later, I cry too.

What the heck is she doing now?

© E. Stocking Evans 2016

*****

Originally published in the Ahwatukee Foothills News in October 2005:

One of my best friends is in a box on my dining room table. 

The word on the box is “Tanner,” and not much else. That’s fine, because if I start with the words about him I may need to use, well, about 500 of them, because like potato chips, one is never enough you’re talking about your best friend.

 Tanner was the most Major of Canae: 110 pounds of golden retrieving, sweet-tempered, shedding excitement and possessed of the big appetite and the bigger self-confidence you have when you know you’ve got the biggest head of any quadruped in the Foothills.

He could do tricks, too, like stand flat-footed on the floor and steal an entire pizza from the middle of the kitchen table, which is not something that your run-of-the-mill, everyday best friend can, or would think to do. Then he’d sweetly power-goose the delivery guy, which is a tip no one really expects.

If you looked up “best friend” in the dictionary, you would find that Tanner had eaten that page and pretty much the rest of the B section. Having digested everything he could on the subject, he knew that a good friend listens more than he talks, gently wags his tail when there’s nothing left to say, and never grabs the remote even when you’re watching a Star Trek marathon.

He liked everyone I liked, and was quietly polite to everyone I didn’t. Then he’d politely eat the tongues out of their shoes or quietly ralph in their purses, which is really going above and beyond the call of duty, even for a best friend. To Tanner, I was Mother Teresa and Johnny Carson and Stephen Hawking all rolled into one. And if I’m half the person that dog thought I was, then I’m twice the woman I ever hoped I’d be.

When something was bothering him, Tanner never made a fuss, but instead had perfect faith that I would notice that something was wrong, and then trusted perfectly that I would then make it better.

If only I could.

Over the summer we fretted as he encountered one setback after the other, and each time we took our good and patient friend to our good and patient veterinarian, and made sure he got his medicine, which of course he took like a good and patient….well, patient.

In the end, like the considerate and gentle friend that he always was, he did what he always has done, which was to make the hardest thing I dreaded doing the only thing I could do.

So when the time came that he had to say goodbye, I took my good and patient friend one last time to the good and patient vet, and I held his paw while he slipped away, because that’s what you must do, for your best friend.

Some would say that he staggered out of our lives last week when he tried to play one more time in the yard, fell, and couldn’t get up that last time. But we know better.

Because the best ones never really leave you, even when all that’s left of them is in a white box, marked with a word that’s synonymous with “Best Friend.”

© E. Stocking Evans 2005