After losing your dog, no matter the age, baseball and life take a back seat

Life goes on but saying goodbye to man’s best friend is never easy

On Tuesday, Debbie and I lost our best friend for the past eight years, a 15-year-old rescue beagle named Kramer. Loving and loyal to the end, Kramer passed away in the arms of his mother, tears flowing freely as we watched him take his last breath, quietly and peacefully sitting with him and feeling him next to us on the floor in the office of Dr. Bishop. Kramer had been part of the family since Aug. 2018.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem fair that dogs are estimated to live seven human years for every 12-month calendar year. That being understood, we know that we share this emotion, this grief, with many others that have gone through the same heartache of losing “man’s best friend”. Dogs feel the love and, yes, are affected by every other human emotion we show them, so make sure to make every living moment precious. Because of that, ungodly 7-to-1 miscalculation, most of us, with our four-legged best friends have gone through similar feelings of loss. Yes, we share your pain.

Our pain is still fresh, our emotions raw. Looking back to our first encounter with our youngest/oldest child/pet, it’s clear he had me at hello. No, Debbie and I weren’t planning on finding another dog so soon after we lost our previous pup, Gordy, but two months after that grieving portion of our heart was ripped out, we happened to be driving past a shopping plaza in north Oakville, where a sign alerted us that they were hosting a sidewalk availability for rescue dogs, ready for immediate adoption.

There were a dozen dogs spread out in front of the stores on the sidewalk in cages. All of them were rescues brought in from the U.S. The hopeful dogs were all different sizes, shapes, temperaments, and breeds. How on earth should one ever be expected to decide which of them, if any, is right for your family?

It turns out this choosing process was not as difficult as it may have appeared. The air, as we approached, was filled with a cacophony of barking dogs, seemingly well rehearsed, as the dozen hopeful animals in their undersized cages took turns, to the point of being scripted, creating a symphony of homeless canine confusion.

In the middle of this sidewalk scene was only one non-participating dog, in a cage, sitting quietly, seemingly far from the madding howls. He stood out by sitting out. His cage was far too small and Debbie asked the woman hosting the event if she could open the cage and we could meet this lonely beagle. Even though the cage was a standard open grill, the pup strolled from his tiny prison, blinking like Papillon emerging into sunlight from months in solitary (movie of the same name).

The puppy, tail wagging furiously, walked over to me, looked up, locked eyes, stood on his hind legs and wrapped himself around my calf, uttering nary a word not a sound. I asked the host what his name was. “Kramer,” she said. It was ov-uhh! For a Seinfeld-raised family, that was it. I walked quickly across the mall parking lot towards a random bank, withdrew the requested money for the rescue group and headed back to complete the adoption. Welcome to the family, Kramer Griffin.

Kramer’s back-story for the first seven years of his life, before Aug. ‘18 when we lucked out and he joined us, was not an easy upbringing. He had been discovered by the rescue people discarded in a dumpster in Kentucky. His front teeth were all gone, worn down. They say it was likely by gnawing at the steel bars of the cage trying to escape, the cage in which he was kept for much of his earlier life. Later, when his usefulness to his former owners was over, he was dumped, literally.

Given that difficult backwoods background, Kramer might have been forgiven for being distrustful, or snarly with strangers and other dogs in the neighbourhood. Instead, Kramer, from Day 1, was affectionate with everyone he met, including other dogs, young children, cats, rabbits, squirrels and all other wildlife or humans that he encountered on his thrice daily walks. He was keenly aware of his schedule.

Kramer was a creature of affectionate habit, with physical limitations that sometimes frustrated him. At an ideal fighting weight of 35-45 lbs., he found with alarm as he aged that he could no longer jump up on our bed, so we quickly bought him a wooden stairway that he learned to navigate like a Wallenda over Niagara Falls.

His nightly habit was the same. After his final evening walk, Kramer would make his way slowly up the real stairs from the main floor to bedroom, climbing his own stairs onto the bed, then he would go and slyly lie next to the pillows in my spot. He did this with a certainty that when I came up later, I would give him a treat to regain my spot, so as soon as I reached into the treat bag, he would slowly lift himself up and go make tight circles and lie down at the bottom of the bed.

Kramer was almost deaf, almost blind, but never dumb. To follow up on this Who reference, I’m sure if given a chance, he could have played a mean pinball.

We had moved to Stoney Creek last October and after a long cold winter, the neighbourhood kids, as weather warmed, were just getting to know and to seek a daily audience with their new friend, Kramer. Now, those kids, our four adult children and, especially, Debbie and I will miss Kramer forever. RIP beagle boy.

Meanwhile, life goes on and Griff’s The Pitch attention turns back to the Blue Jays as they continue on their six-game losing streak, hosting Shohei and the Dodgers in the series finale on Wednesday afternoon.