BRACK: If you want a friend, get a dog

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher

OCT. 30, 2015 | Life got darker this week when a shining light of my family’s lives went out.

Our 14-year-old dog passed on, leaving our daughters without an elegant presence that’s been with them ever since they were born.

There were lots of tears for our Simon, a Labrador-Dalmatian mix whose long legs suggested a speck of greyhound thrown in for good measure. Rescued from a local agency, he joined us a year after my wife and I married.

This week after hundreds of miles of walks, thousands of pounds of food and a million smells that kept his world alive, old age caught up with our friend who looked like he wore a tuxedo every day. Two of the hardest things my wife and I have ever done happened within hours — making the decision that his time had come and then telling our daughters that their friend wouldn’t be coming back home.

For a large number of us, treasured pets like Simon sometimes feel like our only friend.   They can sense our pains. They seem to understand. They often offer stability when the world is crashing down. And unlike people, they don’t judge. Instead, they give calm, unrelenting, complete love.

A Greenville friend, Chip Felkel, jokes that he had an open affair with another women in his own house under his wife’s nose. And today, almost a dozen years after his dog is gone, he still gets emotional thinking about her enormous blue eyes.

“She stole my heart, endearing herself in sometimes subtle, sometimes bold ways. She showed her loyalty and her commitment, and her jealousy and her individuality. She punished my wife for having the audacity of becoming pregnant with our son – by systematically tearing up the most expensive pairs of shoes she could find until she was banished from the house for what seemed like an eternity to me but what was really only one night. And, yet the same child whose arrival she seemed to dread she protected, sleeping by his crib before he was born, lying between him and a roaring fireplace during a power outage, even though the popping scared her immensely, and the result of being burned herself….

“She was my friend, my companion and at times both confidante and counsel — whose ability to answer with just the right words without ever speaking is something that will always amaze me and a memory I will always cherish.”

I’ve long thought the world would be a calmer, better place if politicians and leaders acted more like dogs.

President Harry S Truman wisely said, “You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog.”

Dogs are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, obedient and brave — all of those Boy Scout things that many of our politicians seem to forget. Dogs can sniff out a phony. They’ll stick with you, unwilling to turn on someone when it’s convenient. They are willing to give someone they don’t know a chance. Dogs stick with you. And they’ll go out on a limb if you need help. People, however, don’t consistently do these things, letting you down more often than doing what’s right.

These days in a South Carolina marked too regularly by random violence or turmoil caused by nature, perhaps we should turn more for inspiration from our pets, the friends of our souls, to inspire us to do what’s good and right.

Our pets might not be able to talk, but when we look deeply into their eyes, we can almost hear them say, “Scratch me behind the ears. Rub my belly. How about a treat? Don’t forget others.”

We already miss our Simon’s contented, smiling pant. It won’t be long before his musty scent drifts away from our rugs. Soon, we won’t find tumbleweeds of his inch-long black and white hair in a corner here, under a table there. But he’ll always be with us, inspiring us to do better.

Saint Simon Brack, 2001-2015. Rest in peace.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com