It's amazing how much a dog can change our lives; here is this non communicative creature, it licks its own butt, it eats its own vomit, it chooses to follow its own path at the most inopportune times, and yet... they make our lives better.

Casey Rose was a basset hound; a dog I never wanted, but ended up with anyway. She was a pain in the butt. Stubborn as the day is long, she refused to be walked anywhere. If you wanted to walk, she wanted to stop and sniff. If you wanted to stop and chat, she wanted to chase a rabbit, or squirrel, or a mailman.

She was also an escape artist of astounding talent. She had a way of fooling you, looking all sleepy and exhausted, lying low until the chance came to bolt between your legs and vanish into the world without so much as a goodbye. She could sense a weakness in a fence, and fold herself into impossibly tight spots to gain freedom. Her forays into the outside world always ended badly.

Captured once by the cunning sloped sides of a flower box she had to get into because there were empty Twinkie wrappers there, another time by the porch of a family that barbecued constantly, ("That dog loves barbecue" the elderly black gentleman said as we loaded her in the car..) her many defeats and humiliations at the hand of inanimate objects never broke her spirit.

She was deeply offended by trash cans. Trash cans made her angry when and wherever she saw them, as she knew that trash was meant by the creator to be free. Her free range rubbish zealotry earned her many enemies in the neighborhoods we lived in, but other peoples opinions were never important to Casey. She routinely freed the oppressed garbage whenever possible, spreading it out across many lawns with the hope that it would be enjoyed by all. She would then frolic with the waste, teaching it to be rolled in, helping herself to those portions of it that might still be edible and smearing herself with whatever smelled the worst. She was active in the sanitation rights field all her life.

Casey was a sleeper. What Shakespeare was to the stage, Casey was to sleeping. She was a committed sleeper; sleep was her life’s work and all consuming passion. She once woke up on the sofa (a place she wasn't supposed to be) because her hindquarters were slowly slipping off the edge. Most of us would have moved at this point, rousing ourselves from slumber and moving to a more stable position; not Casey. So deep was her conviction to the restive arts that she raised her head minutely, opened one eye, thought on it for several seconds, calculated the amount of time it would take her backside to make contact with the floor, then sighed deeply and sorrowfully and went right back to sleep again. Never was a soul more valiant.

Casey was deeply moved by bad odors. The worse a thing smelled, the more she loved it. She would roll in anything that smelled horrible. Anything. As a result, we were always the first to know if anyone in the neighborhood was having trouble with their sewer line, or if there was a skunk in the area, or if there might be a dead carcass somewhere in the woods near our home. She provided this service to us at no charge and at great personal expense, for she despised bathing and hated the hairdryer with all her might.

Casey liked to let everyone know what belonged to her; she accomplished this in the traditional dog way, lifting one leg to give the adored object her blessing. I was amazed at the things this dog "owned"; every sofa she sat on, every dog bed, she even went out of her way to demonstrate her affection for me by "marking" the bed... on my ex wife’s side. I've never loved an animal more.

Casey was a culinary daredevil; anything that looked like it would cause problems in the digestive tract was hastily gobbled up. She ate a chicken pot pie once; frozen. Pan and all. Stole burgers from the grill. Ate dead animals that were way past their expiration date. And chocolate. She loved chocolate. One time she ate a 2 pound bag of hesheys kisses all at one setting! Chocolate can kill dogs by overloading their system with sugar, but somehow she survived. She also loved burping. She would save the nastiest and most fragrant burps (the ones resulting from consumption of, say, a dead possum butt) for those of us she loved most. I am proud of every burp I ever received.

I began this remembrance of my best friend by saying dogs were "non-communicative"... that’s not exactly true in Casey’s case. Casey was a gifted communicator. Unfortunately, her language was one of her own design and baffling to all attempts to decipher it. Near as I could tell, her native tongue was the howl. She would howl to warn us of impending disasters, howl to be let out, howl when the house was approached by strangers, howl when friends arrived. She would howl late at night for no apparent reason. When she was sad, she would howl. Also when she was happy. And angry. And hungry. In time, we came to accept the howling and either hugged her or fed her or let her outside when she started in. Sometimes that would stop the howl, but most of the time it didn't.

Casey was a disgusting, smelly, noisy, stubborn and greedy dog.

She was also a great friend, a great comfort, and the most loving, understanding and caring creature I have ever known. She had eyes that were sweet and soulful, ears that were floppy and often covered with food but always eager to listen to any problems we had and offer us a friendly lick or an impromptu hug... (or a nasty burp.) She was a great playmate, an endless source of entertainment, and the most fearsome defender of small children I've ever seen.

Casey was eighteen years old when she passed on. She had witnessed the growth of my children for fourteen of those years, and she was the best friend of my youngest daughter. She was always understanding when anyone pinned her ears together, she always stayed still for tea parties (especially if there were cookies) and she was patient when being bandaged or dressed in skirts, or diapers, or bonnets or the Halloween hot dog costume.

I have been blessed with the friendship of many kind souls, and I have lost many friends and family members that were dear to me... and I have had many dogs in my lifetime. I have lost dogs that were hit by cars, lost them to sickness, and just plain lost a couple that wandered off and never came back. Never has the loss of a dog effected me as much as the loss of Casey has. She was the most noble four legged creature I have ever encountered. She wasn't the smartest, or the prettiest, or the best smelling, but she was the best. Some may not see the reason I loved this dog as deeply as I did... but that’s because they've never known the joy of watching children laugh and play with a basset, the supreme bliss of having a smelly dog curl up next to them, or maybe because they've never felt the warm rank burp of a happy basset hound that loved them in a way that only a basset can.

Goodbye, Casey. Wherever you are, I hope the trash cans are easy to tip over, the rabbits are slow and tasty, and the barbecue grill is always on, always full, and always unguarded. You're still my good girl, my pretty girl... and I love you.