daughters went to James and Kelly Hamilton , and their daughter Ruby . They ’ re still with them .
We kept one of her daughters we named Barbra Streishound because of her strong voice , long nails and prominent nose . She was stunning .
With motherhood , Star ’ s love of coffee deepened and it was harder and harder to keep her from stealing ours . She also developed a strong love of chocolate .
When my cousin Diana came for a visit , I brought home a Chocolate Kahlua pie .
I started to make coffee , then remembered that I was out of cream . I jumped in my car and ran to Brookshire ’ s to buy more coffee cream . Diana went with me . When we returned , I put the coffee on , got the plates and started to serve the pie , but I couldn ’ t find it . I looked in the fridge , looked in the oven , looked in the pantry . No pie , anywhere . I thought I ’ d put it on my dining table , but no , there was no pie on my table .
Then Diana went outside and found the pie box and pan on my deck . She came back in . I called Star . She bounced into the dining room , she sat up pretty , belched loudly and bounced away . I made cookies . When a friend helped the Humane Society of North Texas with dogs that came in after a major tornado devastated Alabama , she posted a picture on Facebook of an oddlooking little red dog with a blonde Mohawk that had been displaced in that tragedy . She captioned the photo with , “ I haz no home and I needs one .”
We had to have him . We adopted the little dog and named him “ Hazmat .” The girls were appalled at first . Muttdonna was the first to show any friendliness toward Haz , but the other girls eventually followed her lead . By that time , we had Parker County Today and he went to the office with us every day . The girls visited on occasion , but there ’ s only so much dog cuteness one small office building can accommodate .
We tried to let all four of the dogs sleep with us , because , well , they all wanted to . They all started out at the foot of our bed and by the time morning came , the dogs were sleeping in the middle of our bed and we were hanging off the edges . In the end , only Haz was allowed to sleep with us because he stayed at the foot .
In May of 2016 , Steven came home through the back gate , Mutt came out to greet him , she let out a small bark , wagged her tail and collapsed . We were devastated . She was 15 years old . It ’ s hard to say goodbye to a great dog .
Star suddenly became Alpha Dog . I don ’ t know when she got the memo , but it didn ’ t take her long to take over the house . In the living room , we had a wing chair and ottoman . Star Bones immediately turned it into a watchtower . She took to bouncing onto the back of the wingchair where she would run surveillance on the neighborhood . She headed her own security firm . If she saw anything amiss , anything — a stray cat strutting through a yard or an opossum sauntering toward the bushes , or a human out for a walk — she would begin the official bark alarm for the neighborhood , then every dog within a four-block area would follow suit . It was priceless .
Last year , I noticed that Star ’ s favorite wing-backed chair was beginning to look worn and we decided to replace it with a pewtercolored chair with a much lower profile . We placed the old chair at the curb with the word , “ Free ,” on a sheet of white paper penned to it . Someone hauled it off an hour after we moved it to the curb .
Star was not pleased with the new chair . She never sat on it . By the time we realized how sad Star was to see the chair go , it was too late to get it back .
By early spring of this year , it was obvious that Star was slowing down . We had to lift her onto the sofa so she could watch television with us ( she still got a kick out of hockey games and loved reruns of Dexter ). I ’ d lift her onto the futon in my little home office so she could snuggle up next to me as I wrote The Morning NewsBlast .
I spoke with Star ’ s vet , Dr . Bryan , about the way Star had suddenly slowed down . He asked did she still enjoy eating and did she have a healthy appetite ? She did . She was getting rather chubby , actually . She was 15 now , three months older than her mother Mutt had been when she died . She still sat up pretty , but it took her longer to get up and she couldn ’ t stay up nearly as long as she once did . She didn ’ t enjoy walks much any longer and she couldn ’ t go very far . I had a feeling that our time with Star would soon come to a close . I asked Dr . Bryan what we could do for her or give her to make her feel better . “ She ’ s the equivalent of a 105-year-old lady , Marsha ,” Dr . Bryan said .
The weekend rolled around and I really wanted to go out and have fun , Star wasn ’ t looking so good . We decided to stay home and cook , eat and watch old movies .
She was fine . Actually , she seemed to be livelier and enjoying things more that afternoon than she had in a good long while . Maybe she was going to be OK , after all .
Early in the evening , Star began to pant really hard , hyperventilate really . I tried everything . I gave her a baby aspirin . She spit it out . She went outside for a while , then she came back in . I held her . I sponged her off with cool water . Nothing helped . Finally Haz came out of the bedroom , he licked her face , then turned and went back in our bedroom . Star followed him . Barbra Streishound was waiting there for her . She licked Star ’ s face . Star stopped panting and got in her dog bed , laid down and quietly drifted out of our lives .
We laid her to rest next to her mother in the corner of our backyard .
A month has gone by since we lost Star ; already the honeysuckle is starting to cover her grave .
To say I miss her is an understatement . I ’ m trying to heed the advice of Dr . Seuss , “ Don ’ t cry because it ’ s over . Smile because it happened .”
Star gave us a lot to smile about . Sometimes the best things in life are the ones we never planned .
Thanks for Reading , Marsha Brown , Editor-in-Chef and Publisher , Parker County Today Magazine
AUGUST 2018 PARKER COUNTY TODAY
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