Dog Music Quotes

“She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, “Good dog! Good dog!”

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath my youngest’s bed.
We found her twisted limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet’s, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
- John Updike, ‘Dog’s Death”
― Joseph Duemer, Dog Music: Poetry About Dogs

“She passed the needle to the doctor
And for once I knew what to do
And held her head against mine.
I cleaved to that smell
And lied into her ear
That it would be all right.
The veterinarian, whom I’d fought
About when to do this thing
Said through tears
That it would only take a few minutes
As if that were not a long time
But there was no cry or growl,
Only the weight of her in my arms,
And then on the world.
- Bruce Weigl in the poem May”
― Joseph Duemer, Dog Music: Poetry About Dogs

“OLD BLUE (Anonymous)
Had an old dog and his name is Blue.
Betcha five dollars he’s a good’n too.

Here Blue, you good dog you.

Showed him the gun and I tooted my horn,
Gone to find a possum in the new-ground corn.
Old Blue barked and I went to see,
Cornered a possum up in a tree.

Come on Blue, you good dog you.

Old Blue died and he died so hard,
Shook the ground in my backyard.
Dug him a grave with a silver spade,
Lowered him down with a golden chain.
Every link I did call his name.

Here Blue, you good dog you.
Here Blue, I’m coming there too.”
― Joseph Duemer, Dog Music: Poetry About Dogs