Good Neighbor

I love telling people the story of why we decided to get a Welsh Corgi.

It was our neighbor that lived down the avenue from our house. He was an older gentleman who owned three corgis, all female. It was his frequent excursions around the block with all three dogs that stopped us in our tracks. He loved it when people stopped him to ask about them and would tell the story of how they were all littermates and they were going to be divided up between his daughter and himself but when they were seperated, they became so lonely for each other that his daughter brought her dogs back to dad. They made an adorable "herd" and whenever we looked out the window to seen him "walking the girls" we would go out to say hello.

There was also the time when my kids were in elementary school that they missed the school bus and I had already left the house for work (we all left the house at the same time). He suspected that they had missed the bus and he drove them to school. Not as easy as it sounds as my kids went to a magnet school on the other side of town and he had two young kids as his navigators since he wasn't quite sure how to get there.

All this to say that we were very fond of this neighbor and recently we watched as he started to lose weight and look frail. His children came home and the dogs didn't get walked around the neighborhood.

Oddly enough, when I walked Shuggie down past his house yesterday, the girls were locked in the back yard and no one seemed to be home. This was very odd as they were rarely outside without supervision.

Within an hour my husband called me to tell me that he had passed away a few days ago. While walking Shuggie, he had inquired of a neighbor as to what was going on and he learned that the funeral was the day before.

It feels sad that we never met his wife or children. They never knew how much we enjoyed his company and how his presence brightened our day.

And how much we'll miss his walks with "the girls".