With so many poems showing up about beloved dead dogs, I post this as a poem from the dog's point of view:
The Revenant - Billy Collins
I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you--not one bit. When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.
When I watched you toweling yourself dry,
I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap. I resented the way you moved,
your lack of animal grace,
the way you would sit in a chair to eat,
a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand. I would have run away,
but I was too weak, a trick you taught me
while I was learning to sit and heel,
and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand. I admit the sight of the leash
would excite me
but only because it meant I was about
to smell things you had never touched. You do not want to believe this,
but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,
disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives. The jingling of my tags drove me mad.
You always scratched me in the wrong place.
All I ever wanted from you
was food and fresh water in my metal bowls. While you slept, I watched you breathe
as the moon rose in the sky.
It took all of my strength
not to raise my head and howl. Now I am free of the collar,
the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,
the absurdity of your lawn,
and that is all you need to know about this place except what you already supposed
and are glad it did not happen sooner-- that everyone here can read and write,
the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.Oh _ref_, so many dead dog poems. I don't know where they start, probably in one of the odes of Horace. The earliest one I know of is by the great Victorian Poet, Matthew Arnold, who wrote this in 1887, about his dog Kaiser. It's called Kaiser Dead - And then there's the poem that actor Jimmy Stewart read on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show in 1981. What, Kaiser dead? The heavy news
[some lines about the muse] Kai's bracelet tail, Kai's busy feet,
Were known to all the village-street.
What, poor Kai dead?" say all I meet;
"A loss indeed!" Six years ago I brought him down,
A baby dog, from London town;
Round his small throat of black and brown
A ribbon blue,
And vouch'd by glorious renown
A dachshound true.
And so it goes, on and on, for 13 dog-filled stanzas. His mother, most majestic dame,
Of blood-unmix'd, from Potsdam° came;
And Kaiser's race we deem'd the same—
No lineage higher.
And so he bore the imperial name.
But ah, his sire!