Dog Humor

Our last trip to Flagstaff was an odd and rather sad one. As a family, it was time to clean out Kirk's grandfather's large custom home in Forest Highlands. Its residents , most recently consisting of Grandpa himself and the ever loveable ancient Akita Mikey had long since moved on and it was time.


It was a rain soaked weekend, which seemed oddly appropriate. Most of the sadness had washed away in the couple of years since Grandpa's passing and now what was left was a strange sense of duty about sorting and dividing the home, which was just as he had left it.

Lilly, Kirk's aunt Brooks soft coated wheaton terrier, rolled playfully on the wet bricks that paved the way to the threshold. She would have none of this somber mood. While the rest of us went and sorted through receipts, photographs and other odd pieces of paper generations older than any of us- Lilly took the high ground and played around the spacious property. She seemed to smile and laugh as she milled about, oblivious to the task that befell the rest of us.

There is a special property in animals. They seem to be able to sense the mood of a situation and modify their behaviors accordingly. Lilly seems to have skipped out the day God was handing out this special sense. Oops.

Overall, the weekend brightened eventually. After finding and discussing family history in a make-shift living room floor family reunion (not that we don't do that several times a year) we managed to find what is arguably the most prized possession of all- a photo of Brook, mid twenties, creatively clad in a lilac colored leotard, headband and leg warmers - posed precariously in front of a startlingly phallic cactus. We were later told she had been auditioning to be a jazzercise instructor.

After we had blown up to an 8x10 at the local Walgreen's and framed it for posterity (Brook has two young tween daughters who were delighted) we decided that maybe the dog was right. There was certainly something there worth rolling over and laughing about.