Gizmo

I found this lone wolf memorial in one of our local beachfront off leash dog parks yesterday. It commemorated one ‘Gizmo,’ somebody’s bestest buddy. It was lovely and forlorn, and it made me think how my local redneck of the woods doesn’t exactly have an official, phantasmagoric doggie memorial style garden like Haole’s in Ventura or Gwen’s in Del Mar.

It made me consider…briefly…appealing to our local parks department to let me start one of my own for the community, which I’m quite certain would go over like gangbusters in my dog friendly hometown, though there will surely be dissenters crying foul at the idea of a tiny sector in that same park covered in painted rocks for fallen doggies. There’s always somebody ready to piss in the Cheerios, and there’s the somewhat notorious bureaucracy here in town often resistant to civilian initiatives in addendums to public spaces. It’s a long shot and it’s probably been suggested long before I had the idea.

This testament to Gizmo motivated me all the same. Would I mind being able to place rocks for my five passed doggos who patronized the shit outta that same dog park? I would not mind. It’s literally one of the bedrock joints where I trained each and every one of them to behave off leash, to socialize with other mutts, to run and play and cavort and frolic and just be happy dogs. I still walk there to this day with my current buddy Mayday, and that’s how I came upon this solo rock this week.

As loyalist Roadies hereabouts may recall, I already placed five painted rocks for my passed on doggies out near UC Santa Barbara at a makeshift shrine of driftwood perpetuated by the endemic student body base thereabouts. A more formalized array, at what’s undoubtedly the premiere dog park in the entire city outside of the beaches, seems apropos. Do I have the fortitude at my age to get that ball rolling? I don’t know. Not only would I have to endure parks and recreation red tape (not something I’m good at), I’d probably have to pay out of pocket just to get the setting ready and raring to go, plus there’s the physical labor to consider…several wheelbarrows of gravel ground cover, stepping stones, perhaps a signpost or plaque for the memorial site, and a small list of rules for future additions. I’m quite sure the 20’x50’ space I already identified as a prime spot near the entrance, an abandoned concrete slab foundation, would fill up with memorial rocks within sixty days.

People like tendering honorariums for their lost loved ones. I think we’ve figured out why within the hallowed, haunted sectors of this column, perhaps redundantly so at this point. Descansos are a literal translation of this need.

You might ask why I’m so repetitive in my dog memorials, especially those of you who’ve read across my columns and know well that I tender frequent honors for my dogs of future past, dropping dog tags in remote wildernesses, painting rocks for Gwen’s Garden, totems for Day of the Dead altars, and so on. It’s because I don’t really see them as gone. I feel them every day. Doing the tangible stuff in my limited tangible way, keeps them with me after a fashion, until I too ascend to those higher spheres and I’m able to see and experience them directly once again, mano y doggo.

My girl says it’s how I process. I’m not sure about that, but I know one thing. The dead aren’t really dead. They’re just inaccessible to us in their new forms. It’s annoying, isn’t it? Apparently there’s a good reason why that is, and like you, I can’t fucking wait to hear about it.

I may or may not get up the gumption to kick start this local project. No promises. I’m already known in town as the ‘Aussie dude,’ what with decades of hounds hanging their heads outside my truck’s back seat windows. If I get a petition going for a doggie memorial garden, that’s only going to intensify, and corroborate proof positive to my human associates that I am indeed ‘a weirdo doggie guy.’

Do I care about public perception?

I most certainly do not.

I’ll let y’all know if I decide to spearhead such a movement. Like I said, somebody’s likely already tried and failed. But if not? Maybe.

In the meantime, whomever left this stone for Gizmo…fret not, friend. You’ll see your precious doggo again. I guarantee it.

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