RIP Lincoln, you truly were a best friend

14 years ago on President’s day my then fiancé and I walked out of the gym on the campus of SAGU and ran into a young lady giving away the cutest little jet black puppy. She had picked him up from the pound but couldn’t keep him because her apartment didn’t allow dogs (go figure that one???) Of course my beautiful bride to be couldn’t resist petting and cuddling him and let’s just say with her womanly ways convinced this old stick in the mud to take him home. This became our first “child.” Yes I know we weren’t married yet, but we adopted anyway and somehow managed!
It wasn’t long before we settled on the name Lincoln in honor of it being president’s day and he just looked like a Lincoln type of dog. He was a lab/chow mix or maybe shepherd? We never quite knew the right mix or breed, but whatever it was he was intelligent, scared of fireworks, thunderstorms and vacuums and only took about 2-3 weeks to potty train. I had many dogs growing up in south Louisiana, but never any that made it 2 or 3 years because of snakes and other wildlife, as well as just plain getting rid of them because they were crazy! I remember this one dog we brought home from Colorado one summer wouldn’t stay in the fence. He figured out how to climb. I would sit and watch him get all the way up that fence, jump down and be right there waiting to put him right back in. Of course it didn’t take him long to do it all over again, with the same result. Talk about tenacity!
This little guy Lincoln was different though. Special in all sorts of ways! “Lincoln get the phone,” my wife taught him that one when she was pregnant with our first son. He figured it out in a few short commands and would proudly grab the phone and trot it over to her. It didn’t take long for that to transition to “Lincoln get me the remote……;-)” (what man can resist?) He also became my wife’s bedmate while I was away at work and she was laboring away with morning sickness. Because of it he would often try to sleep with us in the bed, but I wouldn’t allow it, I’m not the cuddly type. But he was always there. After Keaton was born he wouldn’t even sleep upstairs, he slept in the hallway right outside of Keaton’s door from then on. Our kids have only known life with Lincoln. Through all of the ear pulls, toy beatings, backyard confinements (when the next baby came), garage confinements while he was shedding, he protected and loved his kids. Never scratched, growled at, rough housed with or even pretended to bite one of them. Me however, he would wrestle like there was no tomorrow and could knock me down without much thought. He only barked when he sensed something threatening. Never made a sound otherwise and he always wanted to get to know every dog he ever met or saw and often went galloping after them scaring the pants off of the folks who were walking those poor little things…..imagine a 90 pound dog running at top speed towards you! Of course all he ever did was come to a screeching halt, sniff around, say hi and then mozy on back. The poor thing wouldn’t hurt a fly. To top it off he was so deathly afraid of fireworks and thunderstorms he climbed our backyard fence and for some reason thought it was better in our neighbor’s yard, so he climbed into hers. Then of course there’s the trying to chew through screen doors. Ours was fiberglass, my father in laws was metal, he destroyed the metal one (sorry Dave!).
Speaking of destruction, that reminds me of when as a newly married couple in our second apartment we returned from church one night to find it destroyed…..couch messed on, chewed cushions, chewed wedding sign in book, carpet pulled up from one corner of the living to the next, he spent a week on the patio. Of course in his disciplined state he decided to let his disingenuous state be known by chewing the door frame off, literally, about 4 feet of it. He was stubborn in a “I am my own boss” sort of way and he liked to prove it every once in a while, mostly by just wandering, all around the neighborhood. We might all be able to imagine how that went over with neighborhood HOA police ;-)
I guess the Marley and me moments could keep going, like me and Lincoln driving to Colorado from Dallas in a moving truck. One of our first camping trips on the south platte, he wanted to take a swim, got stuck in a strong current and pushed up against a tree hanging over the water. Poor thing, after I pulled him out by his collar I don’t think he ever went swimming again! The memories can’t go on forever though, so suffice it to say that you will be missed.
To my faithful friend, Lincoln, RIP