The heartbreaking call of a mighty sad basset hound...
The heartbreaking call of a mighty sad basset hound is drifting over my neighborhood this evening. It is beautiful here, sunny, bright...lots of laughing kids playing in their yards with young moms running around trying to keep their eyes on another wild and wayward 4 year old.
You can smell barbecue in the air and, damn, it makes your mouth water when that smell drifts by. I feel a pang of jealousy knowing that we are having left-over pizza. Smelling other people's barbecue is a double-edged sword. Delicious and tangy, yet far away and cruelly someone else's dinner.
It is a perfect day here in the Pacific Northwest. Perfect.
Except the low, sad basset hound we keep hearing from across the street. One of my old ladies has passed away and left her aged basset hound Jimmy behind to sing his laments. It is low, and sad and you know he sat with his momma while she passed and he knows she isn't coming back.
When I moved here ten years ago there were many many old ladies on my block. I was the only "youngster" on the block and I was in my mid 30's. Everybody else was 80+. And one-by-one my neighbors have passed. The couples became widows, the widows slowly disappeared. Their kids came and cleaned out the houses. Many of them I had never seen before.
It is beautiful to hear laughing kids on the block now. All day long it is bad trumpet playing, and girls screaming at bugs, and screaming at dogs, and screaming at each other (holy cow little girls scream a LOT!).
But today I keep hearing Jimmy cry for his dead mom. And it makes me think of Carol and Cathy and Florence and Mildred and all of my neighbors who are gone since I've moved in.
I miss my friends and, man. do I feel sorry for Jimmy. You have never heard s such a cry of sadness from an animal. He is breaking my heart.
Call your moms, everybody, call your moms.
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Give a treat to Jimmy for me and cherish the memory of your friends. 
I lost my beloved husband 8 months ago and I know how Jimmy feels. Poor little guy. Like me, he needs lots of extra hugs right now.
that Jimmy is being cared for part of the time and that you have visited too, but I hope someone will take him on permanently. Poor puppers.
And you.
They are so confused, but respond so well with love and attention. They're hurting, too. My two became inseparable from the moment I brought the second one home. He'd been through a lot. I hope that Jimmy finds someone else to love him soon. He's going to need that.
