4/18/97
Dog Talk
Ann called to share a story about her fathers dog –a story told for twenty years in her family.
My father died of a brain tumor when I was twenty years old. And we had a dog, a little dog named Trot Wood, a little dog that was close to my father and our whole family. My father had a pet name for this little dog. He called him Throg Morton, every once in a while though, it wasnt a name he called him by often. When my father became ill the dog would go by his bed and sit with him daily and just kind of be by his side. When My father died, a few days after the funeral his boss came for dinner at our house and he had never been there before. He sat in my fathers chair at the dinner table. The dog was sitting between myself, and this man. Out of the blue the man looked down at the dog and said Hey Throg Morton. Our whole family was silent and I looked at this man and I said, Why did you say that? He said, I dont know. I dont know that Ive heard the word before. He had no way of knowing that that dogs nick name, only particular to my father, was Throg Morton. It was sort of like my father was communicating to us through the dog, through this man.