Skipper My Best Friend

by Cassandra Parker
(Edmonton,AB,Canada)

Understanding why God takes your pet when your just a young girl is something unbelievable for me to this day. My young springer spaniel was Skipper and he always loved to run and jump and training him was for me an easy thing to do as the love of a pet and a young girl jumped to eternity.

But so much fun can lead you to the one tragedy that you least expect in your heart to ever have. Young Skipper was running down the road with me as we were just a bunch of houses way up from the main driving highway. But on this day while running, out popped a wild rabbit from the field near the house on the hill and it ran towards the highway with Skipper bounding to catch it.

I followed him running tail scale screaming for him to come back and could not catch up with him when suddenly out on this highway breaks a eighteen wheeler pulp truck and I just screamed his name with tears coming down my face. The impact threw him over into the ditch and the driver just kept driving.

I ran down and he was bleeding from the ears, mouth, and just so too much for tears to stop. My mom ran down from our place and carried the limp body of him up to the house where he was pronounced dead and my dad buried him in our great open field with a cross for him and his name.

I lay heartbroken upon his bed and felt lost without him. He was not even a full grown dog yet! He brightened me as I was a young teen who really had no joy of the love of friends. We had him shipped from Vancouver and he was purebred with papers.

It was hard over days to eat, sleep, just tears filled my body. Devastated became the word that was used to describe me. Being young you almost do feel like you have lost your best friend.

Today I am divorced twice with two adult children and a grandmother of 3. But being alone now at 54yrs. I still look back to his picture and a sorrowful grief comes over me at times.

I lost the very friend for me that gave me so much and today I have family yes but no one to share like the friend Skipper graced me with joy. He was a gift to me, as he would run around and beg for bones and raise his paw with tail wagging. So much excitement, crushed on that one day because of a rabbit and a truck and I still ask the man in the sky "WHY"!

I know taking his death would be hard for being so alone all my life would be a deliverance of continued grief inside my open heart. But he is with me and will always be I admit because part of my wonderful dog SKIPPER is part of me within.