(I don’t know the author)
There are various places in which a dog may be buried. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple tree, or any flowering shrub is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a favorite bone, or lifted his head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places in life or death. Yet, it is a small matter. For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps in through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where the dog sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppy hood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained and nothing is lost - if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot he will come to you when you call, come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. An again you call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his foot-fall, who hear no whimper, people who may never have had a dog. Smile at them - for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and that is well worth the knowing. The best place to bury a dog is in the heart of his master (or mistress).
