Auggie's Induction Ceremony

In a quiet but honorable corner of Dog Heaven

Just after the Rainbow Bridge, but before the Fields of Endless Chasing Rabbits, lies a great but stately hall.

As you walk across the smooth white marble floors (easy to clean up after the more excitable residents), you look across the pedestals of dog statues, and the walls covered with classically styled oil paintings, and recognize this as the Hall of Great Dogs.

All dogs are Good Dogs. But there are a special, select few that are Great Dogs. Their memories are honored here, in this hall. You’ll see famous dogs such as Rin Tin Tin and Balto and Laika and Hashi. But also less-famous dogs, like my parents’ doberman Arturo, and Vern’s giant dog Apollo. Dogs that, when spoken of, are done so with a wistful look in the eye and followed by something along the lines of “the best dog I ever had.”

Augustin Malewska Bloem Pastrana, best known as Auggie, not only crossed the Rainbow Bridge on Tuesday but earned a place in the Hall of Great Dogs.

During his 13 years on Earth, these were his accomplishments:

• At only three months old, appeared from the woods of Armadillo Acres in East Texas and managed to charm his way into the laps and hearts of his future parents.

• He graduated from Puppy Kindergarten and Adult Dog Obedience School by the time he was 9 months old.

• He has a citation from the City of Dallas, for the crime of Being a Puppy and Chewing on Things, including the hand of his owner, which was discovered during the human’s routine medical visit and resulted in a 10-day quarantine.

• He has visited and peed on three different countries (U.S.A, Canada, and Mexico)

• He has visited many, many state and national parks in the U.S. and Canada. There’s a photo album here.

• Among the animals he encountered were cats, cows, horses, mules, armadillos, bison, and bighorn sheep.

• He was nearly put in Dog Heaven two other times, once from eating rat poison, and once from chasing a mule while wearing a cone.

• He was present for two solar eclipses, three weddings, four Safetysides, countless work weekends, and he might have been illegally present for a certain Oklahoma burn when we stopped there for one night.

• He never bit a single human being, though his big heavy bark made you think he was going to.

• He never liked the water, and would politely sit on the shore waiting for us to return.

• Other than water, he would follow us to the depths of Hell if it meant he could still be with us.

• He was loved by everyone for his one-ear-up one-ear-down pose, and the discovery that while he was not the cuddliest of dogs, he would be your best friend for 1) food and 2) butt scratchies.

• He could smell a chicharron (pork rind) from great distances, and hear the smallest crinkle of a snack bag being opened, which is how we knew he wasn’t actually deaf but only had Selective Hearing.

• During the last six years of his life, he put up with his bossy and neurotic sister Dutchy, was essentially homeless for a year, and moved to a new country, all while dealing with arthritis, joint pain, and many tumors. We suspect that at least one of those was cancerous, and that’s what got him in the end.

Auggie’s ashes will arrive next week, and we will incorporate them into a suitable memorial on our land, most likely on the hill where he used to bark at the neighbor’s mules.

Please leave a comment if you have any memories of Auggie that you’d like to share. If you would like to see more photos of him and us enjoying life, the park pictures are here, and the other photos are here.

Thank you all for your love and everything you did to help an abandoned puppy from East Texas live a long and happy life.

Love, Julie and Lurko