Ken Beaton guest col: No Blue at all

Not much happens on most days, except Nov. 5, 2015. That day became the first Blue less day. Disregarding two and a half hours in the morning, now there’s no Blue. My mind’s eye has Julie London, a torch singer from the 1950s and 1960s, singing the lyrics to the song, “No moon at all.” Julie has taken the liberty to change the lyrics to, “No Blue at all.”

Almost six year ago my wife visited the Boxer rescue website, Boxers and Buddies and became interested in a female Boxer mix with one and a half blue eyes. You read the previous sentence correctly. Her right eye was all blue. Her left eye had an invisible vertical line with blue on the right side and brown on the other, amazing! Most of her body was brindle with four white socks and a strip of white running down her forehead.

What was that? I thought I heard Blue’s toe nails clicking on the red oak hardwood floors from the living room to the hall to the office. Now there’s silence. I’m standing before a 42-inch high table, similar to Ernest Hemingway’s table, typing on my laptop. I thought I felt my pant cuffs being sniffed by her. Sometimes she would sit next to one of my shoes and borrow the warmth of my calf through my pants for 20 to 30 minutes. Maybe it was my calf borrowing warmth from her body.

Have you ever experienced a dog with an internal atomic clock accurate to a billionth of a second during 10 years? Every afternoon at precisely 4 p.m. she would begin to whine for her dinner.

“Blue, do you want some cheese with your whine?” The whining did not stop until her food dish was place in front of her. Immediately, she would dive into her food dish similar to a school of piranha about to debone a bleeding steer.

Some people might call the following cute, but not me. Immediately after Blue ate or drank, she would rub against my pant leg or my wife’s slacks to wipe her pendulous lips. I thought Blue wiped her lips on us because she did not have a cloth napkin beside her dish. After a thorough search of the Securities and Exchange Commission records, I discovered Blue was a 10% investor in Bobby Page Dry Cleaners in Carson City.

From her quarterly dividends earnings she purchased a blue collar to walk with us around our neighborhood. Neighbors would comment, “That’s nice of you to take Blue for a walk.” They called it a walk, hah! It was more like a drag. At times I had to pull her along. My worse fear was, Ken, you’re going to have to carry Blue home, fireman style, from her afternoon drag!

Speaking for myself, Blue captured my heart. It is so easy to bask in the love only a dog can give. Those memories are stored in my heart where they cannot be hacked by a cyber criminal.

Nov. 5 was the moment all dog lovers dread. In one of Dr. Matt exam rooms he prepared to administer the final injection as my eyes began to glisten. With tears rolling down both cheeks I placed my right hand on Blue before she was injected. When Dr. Matt removed his stethoscope, I remove my hand. There’s no Blue at all, only loving memories.

Ken Beaton of Carson City contributes periodically to the Nevada Appeal.