Ginger 1998-2011

When I was a little boy, my grandparents had a Beagle.  Her name was Ginger.  Sadly, one day Ginger ran away and was never seen or heard from again.  My grandparents lived in the Adirondack State Park with plenty of wild terrain in which to get lost.  My grandmother maintained that she did see Ginger once in the back of a truck at a gas station.  My grandfather dismissed her claims that the Beagle was Ginger and he may or may not have been right.  Given their location, there were several possible explanations for why Ginger never returned.

A few years after Ginger's disappearance my grandfather passed away and my grandmother moved in with my parents and I.  We did get an Airedale puppy when I was about ten or eleven but it turned out I was allergic to her so she was given away to a cousin.

Fast forward to 1998... My siblings and I pooled our resources and gave my grandmother a Beagle puppy for her 90th birthday.  After my grandmother's passing in 2001, my parents kept Ginger as their own.

When they went to Florida for their winters, Ginger stayed with either my aunt or my brother and was picked up upon their return.  This past November due to my brother getting a new puppy last spring that Ginger didn't get along with, my parents left Ginger with a nice lady who took her in as one of her own.

This past weekend my parents received the sad news that Ginger passed away.  When my dad gave me the news on Monday night, it hit me harder than I thought it would.  I was in college when Ginger entered my grandmother's life and while I did return home briefly after college my contact with her was limited.  Perhaps it hit me so hard because she had been my grandmother's dog and had been a living connection to her.

It won't be the same visiting my parents and not hearing her claws gently tapping against the kitchen floor, howling to be let out, and still be a playful pup at heart even as her energy to do so dwindled with age.

Ginger with my daughter, Sami, summer 2010