Zack Medlin had often walked in this park with his dog Serena. Many times they had walked along the shore of the pond, but never before had they noticed the gray, square stone beneath their feet, under a layer of fallen leaves. In fact, Serena wasn’t about to let Zach stop and examine the find this time either. The elder Stafford was much more interested in brazenly quacking ducks than in some rocks.
But Zack was interested, so he decided to take a closer look at the find. He let Serena walk and decided to examine the artifact more closely. The stone was covered with dead leaves and a thick layer of pine needles. The man raked them with his palms to read the inscription on the stone. It was clearly a gravestone, but not an ordinary one. Beneath this stone rested the remains of someone’s beloved dog.
The Dog Buddy was born 1928-1941.
Buddy was born in Louisiana almost a century ago. He had gone through the Great Depression with his owners a century earlier, and it is possible that he lived with them until the U.S. entered World War II. His owners obviously loved him dearly, because they gave him a grave and placed a headstone with such a touching inscription. But 90 years later, the dog lay alone in a huge park half a square kilometer in size.
Zach learned that the grave was not completely forgotten after all – there was a legend in the city about a brave dog named Buddy. According to the legend, a troop of young scouts often trained in this park. And one day the boy who was swimming in the lake began to drown. Buddy didn’t rush to help himself, but with a deafening bark, he drew the attention of other Scouts – and the boys were able to save his friend’s life. Every “good boy” deserves to be remembered, Zach believes.
In recent years, more and more people are keeping their dogs indoors – rather than in a kennel or doghouse, as was the case in the last century. And it is only natural that a dog becomes a member of the family and people want to bury it in a humane way.
By the way, the first to bury domestic dogs with gravestones invented the ancient Greeks: in I-II century AD they left some graves. Today the gravestones are in museums. One of them is a marble figure of a dog lying on a soft feather bed, wearing a collar set with precious stones and a bell.
Source: lemurov.com
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