Every morning, when I go out to do the chores, I stop and say hello to Red.

I usually say good morning, and sometimes I’ll let him know about people who miss him. Connie Brooks at the book store, the Mansion residents, Sue Silverstein, and her art class students, Blue, Issachar, and Asher, or the crew at the dental center.

To be honest, I don’t really think Red is listening, and to be completely honest, I hope he isn’t.

Standing out there this morning, looking down on his beautiful website, I realized that I was not really being true to myself, or to Red. He and I didn’t have that kind of relationship.

I didn’t talk to him much when he was alive, why chat with him when he is dead? We didn’t need many words, I hope he stays off of that bridge.

Out there on his grave, I was acting out the script other people have written about grieving and dogs, not my own. It’s an easy trap to walk into.

I believe in Spirit Dogs, I also call them Lifetime Dogs, dogs who enter one’s life at a critical time, mark a passage of life, and then move on and visit the lives of other people. Red is one of those, and wherever he is going, I hope he is there.

I know that many of the people reading this love the idea of the Rainbow Bridge, and often tell me that Red will “see me at the bridge” when I die. We love our dogs so much, of course, we hope we will see them again. I don’t really need that or believe it, and I don’t even want it to be true.

The Rainbow Bridge books and stories sell many millions more book than I ever have or will, and I don’t wish to further upset any more of the many people who have different views about animal grieving than I do. I don’t wish to disappoint other people, but I am who I am.

The idea here is that dogs cross a rainbow bridge when they die, are magically healed, and stand around waiting for us until we die, and then we are magically healed and then run and play with them for all eternity. It is the dog lover’s greatest fantasy.

The author’s identity is unknown, I sometimes wonder if he or she wasn’t a bit embarrassed to have written so sappy a tale. (There, I’ve gone and done it, I’ve pissed somebody off.) If I wrote that story, I wouldn’t claim it either, except to get those royalties.

I don’t know what your idea of heaven is, but mine is not throwing balls for various border collies and Labs for all time. I think they deserve better than that, and if I make it to heaven, so do I. I hope I get better things to do, I hope they run and play and make love and eat crap in Dog Heaven.

Here on earth, I get bored throwing balls after just a few minutes. I can’t imagine throwing balls for eternity. That to me, wouldn’t be heaven but the other place.

I have to be honest.

If  loss is loss, then truth is truth, I’m sorry if I disappoint. But not very, and I don’t judge or disapprove of people who feel differently. If you want to meet your dead dogs on this bridge, I hope you do and wish you and your dogs’ nothing but luck

I don’t want Red to be lying in the grave with nothing to do but wait for me to say good morning. I don’t have a lot more to say him. In our country, we are taught to always want more, need more, buy more, expect more. I am learning to love less.

I’ve said my goodbyes to Red, we spent a lot of wonderful years together, and I think I’ve said what I needed to say in the days before he died.

I kissed him on the nose just before his heart stopped. I did tell him I was trying to re-train Fate to herd sheep, and that she was doing well in her fledgling therapy work.

My wish for Red is that he enters the life of another needy human and does for them what he did for me. I don’t know if that happens or not.

I’m not one of those people who claims to know for sure about an afterlife for people or dogs, I’m an I-don/t-know type, I am conscious of how little I really know about life on this earth.

When I watch the news, I see that I know nothing.

It doesn’t seem right for Red to be lying there in that grave waiting for me to come over and say hello. He was a working dog, he needs to work. Chasing balls in heaven is not work. Neither is listening to me tell him things he almost surely can’t hear and probably doesn’t need to know.

Someone sent me an e-mail assuring me that Red was a spirit who will love on, he was, she said “the embodiment of love.”

Maybe, I thought, but I think he was just a great dog. I don’t need to turn him into a Superdog or a supernatural being or make him more than he was.

I’m very glad we buried Red by the small apple tree in the pasture and kept his body on the farm. It’s a beautiful spot. I do feel close to him there.

What I did this morning, and what I will do every morning, is stand quietly at the gravesite, close my eyes, hear the wind whistling through the apple tree, and mostly keep my mouth shut.

I want to think of Red and the wonderful work we did together. I don’t want to forget that. That is my bridge, memory, and meaning.

Red’s spirit is very much in me, on our farm, in that pasture. I can feel it there. I don’t need any more than that.

That is enough.