Today I said goodbye to my long-time canine friend and companion, Pixel. Pixel, a Miniature Pinscher, has been by my side for more than 15 years. I wish there were some way I could look up how many miles we walked together over the course of her life. When she was healthy, there were saturdays when we'd spend more than 10 hours walking in a local park. She loved to explore.
Though Miniature Pinschers are considered a "Toy" breed, there was never anything toyish or small about Pixel. She could jump like a frog and navigate the backs of furniture like a mountain goat. Right up until the last year of her life she could vertically jump the 24 inches required to get up on my bed. She would never just drop off the edge of a piece of furniture to get down either. Instead, she would take a running leap and try to get higher as she left the surface of the item. This gave her the appearance of flying, like some sort of super dog, and a super dog she was.
She was also my miniature guardian and protector of property. She guarded my backyard like a border patrol agent from Hell. Any beast that didn't belong there was going to feel her wrath and, if it was small enough, would likely end up as lunch.
I will never forget the day she took on a raccoon that was at least 1.5 times her size. The back door of my house leads to my garage and in the garage is a door that leads to the backyard. We went out to the garage and, when I opened the door to let her out into the yard, a raccoon was sitting right there on my patio in broad daylight. Before I got the first half-second of the word "noooooooooo" out, Pixel was nudging the raccoon off the patio. The raccoon then rolled on it's back, grabbed Pixel, and started rolling all over the patio with her in his clutches. I could hear her yelping so I knew this was not a good situation. The closest thing to me was a patio chair so I picked up the chair and began trying to stab the raccoon with the leg of the chair. This did not work. I retreated to the garage in search of a better weapon and found a broom. I had visions of teeing up that raccoon like a big, striped, furry golf ball but, when I got back out to the patio, what I saw was Pixel chasing the raccoon toward the fence, nipping its back every several steps. The raccoon climbed up and over the fence while Pixel sat down at the raccoon's departure point and looked at me as if to say, "no problem, that pesky bandit is gone now." I could not find a scratch on her after that, so her yelping must have been more out of fear than anything else.
That, in a nutshell, is how she lived her life.
What follows is a slideshow of images I put together to keep her in my memory forever.
Goodbye ol' girl, I will miss you dearly...
To see this video in a larger window, visit vimeo.com by clicking on the blue video title in the video window. If you don't have a fast Internet connection, turn HD off.
Music - Coming Home by Kendra Springer <http://www.kendraspringer.com/> and <http://www.jamendo.com/en/artist/Kendra_Springer>. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. See <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/> for details.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.
~William Shakespeare
I thought it made more sense to bury the ashes so she now rests in the golden light of the setting sun.
