Oh These Gentle Friends We Have Known

Recently my dear dog of many years passed away, and passed away into the prairie, as my family and I like to say it. Growing up Scaralotti was my dearest little companion and the little white light that would follow me wherever my little child feet would take me. We grew up on the farm together - I left and she stayed and has stayed forever it seems. We have a prairie that surrounds our home, rich and deep, full and life and death. We have little pathways mowed through the grasses which have to be re-mowed every year because the grasses are so strong. Scaralotti loved to play in those grasses with her sister and fellow dog family. Scaralotti and her sister Paganini used to jump straight up into the air to see where they were - what a funny sight! Later in her long life Scaralotti lost her vision and her hearing we think - one night she didn't come home, it snowed and for all we can see she is out there somewhere in the prairie curled up in a little white ball, becoming more white, becoming the grasses and the earth. She holds a dear place in my heart. That little white dog.