A Tribute to
Flash
05/15/2003 to 10/04/2015
In
2009, a coworker asked if I could take on another dog. He explained
that his son and daughter–in-law had a Labrador and Coonhound mix that
was growling and showing his teeth to their newborn child, so the dog
needed to find a new place to live. I went to visit him and saw a
large,
tall, black dog with floppy coonhound ears running around their
backyard
and barking at everything in sight. It wasn't just a normal bark; it
was a
bark accompanied by Coonhound baying - loud and soulful. After chasing
off whatever needed to be chased, Flash sauntered over to me and licked
my face a few times. I knew we would be fast friends. I told Flash's
owners that we would take him, and that I would be back the next night
to pick him up.
Flash came to live at the Knoll house on February 13, 2009.
As I recall, after I put him in
the back seat for the sixty mile journey home, he barked very loudly
most of the way. I think I
was near deaf by the time we arrived home. Flash seemed glad to get out
of the car, and I know I
was.
We didn’t know much about Flash’s history at that point, but I received
his file from the
prior owners shortly after taking possession of him. They adopted Flash
from a shelter in
November 2003, and estimated that he was six months old at the time of
adoption.
Flash
had a few adjustment problems fitting in to the Knoll pack. I guess he
figured that
since he was the biggest and the loudest, he should be the leader of
the pack as well. The Pit Bull,
River, didn’t quite see it that way, and did not like another male dog
intruding on his turf. It took
a while to get to where they could be in the same room together. But
after a while they got along
ok, and even played together. But later Flash sometimes got aggressive
towards the Pit Bull, and
regretted it when the Pit Bull would finish the fight that Flash
started. After a couple of fights,
they had to be permanently separated. Kim spent a bunch of time playing
musical dogs and
keeping the two away from each other.
Flash never was too bright. He liked to run around the back
yard
chasing birds, but he would start barking from the moment he saw them,
so of course they were long gone by the time he got there. He also
liked swimming in the pond. On warm, Summer days he would be in and out
of the pond all day. Continuing
what seems to be a Knoll dog tradition, Flash liked to follow the mower
around the back yard, and spent endless hours following Kim around. In
his later years, his right rear hip and leg seemed to be bothering him,
so it
got to
the point that he couldn’t follow the mower around anymore. Kim took
him to the vet, and they determined that he had a broken hip as a pup,
probably from someone kicking him either before his shelter days or
during his shelter days. That made it tough for him to get up during
his
later years. But Kim got Flash stem cell treatments, which worked
wonders for him until he slowed down to the point his leg muscles
atrophied so much that he did not have much strengh in his rear legs.
Toward the end, he also suffered from dementia and would
walk into the corners of
the room and stand there looking confused. His bad wheels and dementia
got to be too much, and
we had to put him down. But we had the pleasure of loving him for six
of his 12-odd years
(which is pretty old for a big dog like him), and hope we provided a
good home to him. Thank
you Emily and Ben for sharing Flash with us. We miss you, Flashy old
buddy!
If you think the world is being rough on you,
read this .
