For 13 years I bragged that my golden retriever Summer was the “Best Dog Ever.”
It was never truer than on his last day.
Late Monday morning Summer hobbled through Skyline Animal Clinic’s front office. He struggled to carry his 81 pounds because of arthritis in his legs, shoulders and hips — and he couldn’t get his footing on the slick tiles. My husband kept moving floor mats in front of him until we reached the exam room, and then Summer was lifted onto a table.
He never flinched when two technicians came into the room to shave a patch of hair above his left paw and insert a needle. He dozed off as the veterinarian slowly pushed a drug into the vein. A few minutes later his heart stopped beating.
At the end, a dog like Summer deserves a good accounting of his life. His story with me started in July 2010. I was home for a few weeks recovering from a surgery when I decided I wanted a dog and that it had to be a golden retriever. My mother had goldens and I wanted one like hers — a big, fluffy, friendly companion that would love my grandchildren and go on walks with me.
I found him online. But when I called the little municipal shelter in Central Kentucky to ask about him, the man who ran the place was in no mood for it. He snapped and said something like, “Are you with that rescue group? I told y’all I’m very capable of finding a good home for this dog!”
I already knew what he meant. The golden retriever rescue group for Kentucky, which was based in Louisville, had declined to help me when I asked about adopting one of their rescues. They wouldn’t make a trip to the hinterlands of Hopkinsville to do a home visit. Around the same time they turned me down, someone with their group saw a picture of a young golden in the shelter near Springfield, Kentucky. They apparently called and wanted the shelter director to hand that dog over. To hear him tell it, they were persistent and could not understand why he wanted to do his own job.
So the shelter guy and I commiserated over our mutual sense of feeling disrespected. It was us against those big city dog snobs — and he agreed to hold the golden for me until I finished recovering from surgery and could drive up to the shelter to collect him. (I’m not ashamed to say I have some phone skills. In the newsroom where I used to work, they said I should have been a hostage negotiator.)
When I arrived at the shelter, they gave me paperwork that said a county dog warden had scooped up the golden retriever one day as he trotted down a rural road in Washington County. That’s all we knew. Apparently no one reported him missing or came looking for him. He was about nine months old the day I got him.
On the drive home, I stopped at a convenience store and left him curled up in the passenger seat while I pumped gas. When I turned to get back in the car, he was sitting straight up in the driver’s seat, looking over the steering wheel. It was like he was telling me that I was in for some ride.
At first my husband wasn’t thrilled about getting a dog, but he was willing to tolerate my desire for one. The first time John saw our golden dart across the backyard, he said without a hint of sarcasm, “Where’s the rest of his tail?”
Indeed, he was beautiful but not exactly perfect. Somehow he’d lost several inches of his tail. Had he been mistreated or was he the victim of a freak accident? It remained a mystery never to be solved.
Soon we learned about a few other quirks. He wouldn’t turn to his right, and he had an odd gait when he ran, like a horse that paces on the harness track. He wasn’t crazy for food and had no interest in treats. The tellers at Planters Bank constantly handed over dog biscuits that he just sniffed and then ignored.
When I chose his name, it was for the matching color of his coat and eyes. He was that mellow hue of winter wheat right before the harvest. To me, it is the color of summer in Kentucky. Of course, the name confused people. They thought Summer was female. We did not care.
Soon after we got him, Summer began having seizures. Often this happened in the back seat of my car on the way to his day care, Bed ’N Biscuit. We couldn’t figure out what triggered the seizures. He liked riding in cars and he liked his day care, where he enjoyed a special status and spent most of his time in owner Sherry Viall’s business office. The vets helped us tinker with a couple of medications until we got things under control. Then after several years, we weaned him from the meds and he never had another seizure.
Summer was the best house dog. He didn’t chew up anything. Never made a mess. Never tried to steal anyone’s food — with the exception of our cat Sunshine’s food. He would sneak into the cat’s place in the middle of the night and gobble it down. It was so out of character, it was hilarious.
The den was his room and sometimes in the evening he let us know it was time for us to leave and turn off the lights. He would pace around the room until we took the hint. He did the same thing to Sherry at Bed ’N Biscuit. She joked that she didn’t really have an office. It was Summer’s office.
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He never learned that fetch meant he was supposed to return the ball that you threw for him. He would prance around the yard and eventually drop the ball somewhere that required you to walk over and pick it up for another throw.
Summer broke up fights among other dogs at day care, and Sherry occasionally put him in a room full of puppies because he could keep order among the young ones. She said he probably ought to be on the payroll.
Golden retrievers were bred to swim and fetch waterfowl for hunters. But Summer never swam. He’d get about two inches deep and dart back out of the water. He sulked during bath time, but he reveled in snow.
He was not a guard dog. He rarely barked. The squirrels in our yard did not fear him.
Despite all of his weird little habits and traits, Summer was irresistible to humans. People would see me walking him on Main Street and they’d slow up and roll down a window to holler, “Your dog is beautiful!” or “What a great dog!”
John and I took Summer on trips. He spent a night in the Hotel Indigo in downtown Nashville and a weekend in Gatlinburg. He hiked with us at Land Between the Lakes, Pennyrile Forest and the Great Smoky Mountains. He was one of the first dogs on the Hopkinsville rail-trail extension when it was completed in November 2020. He went to Christmas parades and did the Hopkinsville Turkey Trot. He tagged along when we went to Hopkinsville Brewing. He went to outdoor concerts at MB Roland. He was blessed by my priest at Grace Episcopal Church.
When I was still working for the New Era, I sometimes took Summer along for a Friday night shift in the newsroom. Once I put him in the hands of a copy editor and a photographer so I could run downtown to pick up some police reports. While I was away, they took Summer into the newspaper’s photo studio and made glamour shots. They surprised me with a framed portrait of Summer for Christmas.
Twice while walking downtown with me, Summer was jumped by dogs whose owners didn’t have control of them. He held his own and wasn’t hurt, but I was angry and offended on his behalf. I behaved badly with one woman who probably didn’t know her dog had gotten loose. After that, John started walking with us and carried an expandable metal stick in his pocket just in case any others tried to pounce on us.
In the fall of 2016, Summer went with me to Damascus, Virginia, and we stayed a few weeks in a little cottage near the Appalachian Trail. It was a reward I gave myself right after leaving the New Era and ending a 30-year newspaper career. Summer was the perfect companion during that long retreat.
Damascus is the kind of small town where you can take a dog almost anywhere. Summer and I walked the town and the trails surrounding it every day. We hung out at cafes and coffee places. We went to breweries. We watched local children trick-or-treating. I read and Summer lounged. We stayed so long I even had a couple of Amazon packages delivered.
A few days before we left, I bought Summer a Superman cape and we went to the Halloween costume party at the Damascus Brewery. Summer was quite a hit. Everyone wanted to pet him and hear his story. I told them about the guy at the shelter who saved Summer for me.
Four women from out of state were there for a little vacation and they came dressed as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They said they needed their picture taken with Summer, so they gathered around him and I shot the photo.
I have a ton of photos of Summer, but the one with four strangers at Halloween is my favorite. He’s doing exactly what he did best — looking gorgeous and making friends. He was the best.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
