RIP Cobber (David Frum can't be all bad)
RIP Cobber
"Was it four times we pumped Cobber's stomach - or five?"
"Four times, I'm pretty sure," I said. "Once for the cat food. Once for the Halloween candy in its wrappers. Once with the corn cob. And once with the rat poison."
"No, no," contradicted 21-year-old Miranda. "He gulped down the front-hall Halloween candy two years in a row. It was definitely five times. Plus the year he ate my birthday cake. And grandma's Thanksgiving turkey, I think it was Thanksgiving, maybe Christmas."
"We didn't have to pump his stomach for that, though."
"No, he digested that."
Cobber was a dog who tested his luck, but the luck held until yesterday, two months almost exactly to his 15th birthday, when he died peacefully and without pain in his kitchen, surrounded by his family - a long life for a Labrador Retriever, especially one who ate his Halloween candy wrappers and all. He was a dog who enjoyed his meals, and other people's meals too. In that he was no different from other dogs, or anyway, other Labs. Yet I've had many, many dogs in my life - two still remain now, a Cavalier spaniel and a younger Lab - but there was none like Cobber, and there never will be again.
"He was the only dog I've ever known you could talk to without feeling insane," said 18-year-old Nathaniel, broken-hearted on the phone from college. "He understood."
More: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/01/rip-cobber.html
Bye Cobber....
Your family will be along on The Rainbow Bridge before you know it.