Walter the Dog

Walter the dog lived a short life.

Maybe we should have expected it. Walt was the runt. He wasn't supposed to make it. But he rallied. When he was 5 months old, all his brothers and sisters had long been adopted, and there he still was — ready for us to take him home to our boys.

He was a bundle of fun and wonder — but barkless in the beginning. When he finally realized that the backyard was his, he sprang into duty — racing back and forth, making a path between the bushes and the fence, barking at all comers, guarding the perimeter, protecting his people.

In a few weeks, Walt became famous in the neighborhood for his vertical leap, his gorgeous coat and his eagerness to be hugged. When we were walking him, people would stop their cars in the street and say, "What kind of dog is that?!" Little girls would run up and say, "Can I pet him?" A friend of ours said after hugging him, "He's like a cashmere sweater that's alive."

Walt loved playing "nip and flee" with some of the neighborhood dogs. And he was the only dog who ever got Dixie to play. Dixie was a Katrina dog who was found floating on a raft days after the storm. Ever since, she had been frightened and aggressive and never played with other dogs. Until Walt.

Walt did the same with his friend Elliott, who had been rescued from a cruel early life. Once Walter and Elliott got to know each other, they'd do a "backyard tango" — greeting each other face to face and then racing cheek to cheek to the end of the yard and back, over and over again.

In the house, Walt would provoke you into play. If you weren't paying him enough attention, he would poke you with his snout. If you were sitting on the couch, he would drop a tennis ball in your lap — or his stinky, soggy stuffed cow. If that didn't get your attention, he would run and find the stuffed toy manatee, which he knew he wasn't supposed to have, and then parade it in front of the family. That would get him the chase he wanted.

When the trainer would come, he'd run and hide.

When one of us was on a trip and came home, he would jump up and scratch at the door as soon as he could hear the voice on the other side. When the door opened, he would jump up, get a quick hug and then clamp the closest shoe in his mouth and run back and forth in mad celebration.

Walt started to slow down in the springtime, but he was 4 years old, and we thought he was just losing some of his youthful energy. Then, on the Fourth of July, Walt went up to bed before the rest of us — something he never had done. The next night, he didn't come upstairs at all. We took him to the vet, who ran some tests, found kidney disease and told us to take him to the animal hospital.

We visited him there every day. And every time, he shook with excitement, saying: "Thank God! You haven't forgotten me! You've come to take me home!"

After a few days of putting Walt on IVs, the vets at the hospital said his kidneys weren't getting better. They couldn't save him. So we brought him home.

He was energized by his place and his people, and he confused the vets by living another two weeks. In those last weeks, we spoiled him, and he spoiled us. As sick as he was, he still jumped up when we came home, begged for food, barked at dogs, slept in his place, purred when stroked and put his paw out to say, "Pet me more." In his last nights with us, he still heaved his signature deep-vibrating, full-body sigh that said, "Ah, it's good to be home."

Then, on a Monday in late July, he stopped eating and drinking. The boys hugged him goodbye. We took him in, and we let him go.

As they were shaving him to put in the IV, he could see we were upset, and he was licking us to comfort us.

This feels so recent, but Walter the dog died in 2010. Only yesterday we took out the box with his remains, opened it for the first time, grabbed a handful of his ashes and scattered them along the fence on the path he had made — now vanished from neglect these past two years.

Tom Rosshirt was a national security speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a foreign affairs spokesman for Vice President Al Gore. Email him at tomrosshirt@gmail.com. To find out more about Tom Rosshirt and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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