wolly by golly

wolly died on sunday and i haven't been able to put it out of my mind. i feel really weird about seeing him dead, stroking his velvet soft ears, which were still warm, and then curling him up, putting him in the ground and shoveling dirt on him.
we put him behind our vegetable garden so when i'm out there he'll always be near. only every time i've gone out there this week i've had that image in my head - him curled up under all that red dirt clay. it isn't nightmarish. it's just weird.
i found this picture on my camera today. it was just a month ago, the beginning of march. that's w - staring at a tennis ball, so intense, waiting, waiting, waiting ...
wolls was my dog first - a hopelessly devoted nut job who could out fetch and outlast any other breathing being on the planet. if there wasn't a ball, he'd find a stick. if there wasn't a stick he'd find a twig. if there wasn't a twig, he'd find a piece of bark. if there wasn't bark he'd damn near try to get you to throw dirt for him. in a crowd of people he'd sniff out the biggest sucker, corner them with a ball and never ever leave them alone. he made sure that everyone noticed him and that no one ever forgot him.
then he was our dog - tayloe's and mine. we carted him all over the damn place - gave him a river to live by, tortured him with two more puppies, then kept him with us in our 500 sq foot apt in dc and then hauled him out to california and back again. he was never a 'go with the flow' kind of guy - in fact i always sensed that he hated change and in that way he was a kind of ying to our yang. but he was a gentleman, so he did the best he could.
our family grew and wolly - well, he adjusted.
most recently, he'd become little tayloe's dog. tayloe fed him. tayloe gave him a gazillion dog bones at my parents house. tayloe threw the ball for him. in return, wolly tolerated being locked in the bathroom, being drug around the yard by his collar, getting crashed with dump trucks or having buckets of stuff dumped on his head. most times when we went somewhere tayloe would ask if wolly could come too and he always included him in his prayers and list of people in our family (mommy, daddy, tayloe, thomas, wawe).
i'll tell you the truth. i was looking forward to wolly getting older. i knew that was when i'd get him back, when he'd either be too stubborn or too deaf to comply with tayloe's demands and instead be content to lay by my feet.
i always said in his previous life wolly was an accountant - some dude with a desk job whose zest for living had been zapped by florescent lights and microwave lunches.
in his dog life, he made up for all he'd missed. he had space and air, lakes and oceans and rivers. he had grass to roll in, dirt to dig in and tons and tons of balls to fetch. he had four strong, beautiful legs so he could run.
he had a family.
more than anything, he had love.