A Dog’s Life Ain’t So Bad..

My thanks to the thoughtful folks who sent me notes about the loss of our good ol’ pal, Aikane. 
We’re not sure how old he was. About five years ago my wife spotted him running loose along the road, limping and emaciated. She stopped, called the Maui Humane Society, and waited with him until they showed up. When no one claimed him after a few days, she stepped up and brought him home.
We suspect he was a pig hunter’s dog because he had a foot-long scar running clear across his chest. Pretty typical of the kind of wound inflicted by those fearsome wild pigs we have here.
He was a funny dog … peculiar, I mean. For one thing, he didn’t like to be petted. And he never wagged his tail.
And he slept on his back, with all four feet in the air and his jowls flopped open. And he was always on the alert for food, no doubt left over from his days on the lam. I’m not kidding: you could put a bowl of gravel down in front of that dog and he’d be halfway through it before realizing it wasn’t kibble.
So Aikane’s gone and will always be missed. But Cookie is here now, another graduate from the Humane Society’s shelter, and she’s settling in quite well.

And she likes being petted.