Wiley and Winston, the 'big white dog,' together again

(Forgot to post for a while. My bad...)
From Sunday's TIMES and NEWS-STAR

Most of you won’t remember Winston, who appeared in the newspaper from time to time during the past 10 years or so.

But no steady reader of the paper will forget Wiley Hilburn, your faithful and dependable north Louisiana columnist for decades until he passed away Jan. 16, 2014, at age 75.

That’s 17 months ago. Time is a funny thing.

Winston was an often sleepy but always loyal companion to Wiley and his wife, Kate. It was Kate who sent me a note with the sobering news this week, early Tuesday evening:

“Just wanted you to know that I put Winston to sleep this morning; he had lost use of his back legs and it turned out he had a bone cancer on his spine.”

Winston was a Lab mix, mostly Lab but definitely some “mix.” (I never asked Wiley. Or Winston. Some things you just don’t bring up.) They called him the “big white dog,” which is about as perfect as you can get in description. Winston was all three of those things.

“He never barked,” Kate said. “He smelled good. Expert sleeper and napper. He was comfort to Wiley during his hard times and my companion during mine.”

You think of the truth in that, then multiply it by millions. It should remind us that, among other blessings we should pause daily to think on, we should take at least five minutes just to be thankful for the dogs we have been so lucky to know, much less share life with.

Just the fact that Winston grew old — it definitely was not work or over-activity that did him in — that he could not dodge disease, that the world is short one more loyal companion for a worthy mom, is sad. And someone else will have to make a similar decision and do the right thing — a hard thing — this week. God bless you.

But the upside, at least for Kate, is this: “I’m trying to picture Wiley and Winston,” she said, “piled up on some heavenly couch watching a Cubs game.”

Many of you remember Atlanta-based syndicated columnist Lewis Grizzard, who wrote of his black Lab Catfish often, including when Catfish died. Grizzard passed away 20 years ago this past March — (time is a funny thing) — and the cartoon I remember from that time by Mike Luckovich is of Catfish running through the Pearly Gates to greet his typewriter-toting friend.

I like to think of Wiley doing the same to greet Winston.

I did not spend a lot of time around Winston. Sort of let him have his space on the few times I went out to Wiley and Kate’s house in Choudrant. For one thing, Winston had some girth about him. And he didn’t speak, so he always fooled me into thinking he was some giant silent assassin. And he knew I wasn’t Wiley because I was not in the big chair reading a book or watching the game, which were Wiley’s two main positions. If you could see the chair and the den set-up — lots of books on shelves and cozy but still big enough for a big white dog to maneuver — you’d wonder why Wiley ever bothered to leave the house at all.

Books right there. Sweet chair. Blanket. Remote. Game on. Dog. Is this where we strike up the “Hallelujah Chorus”?

During Wiley’s teenage years, Elvis had his first big hit. (Elvis died 38 years ago this Sunday, by the way. There’s that ‘time’ thing again...) And I loved Elvis/Ebis, but there’s no such thing as “nothin’ but a hound dog,” not if somebody really loves that dog, and not if that dog really loves somebody.
Just to keep you up to speed, before I knew I’d hear from Kate, I went by Wiley’s Tuesday, by his grave, in mid-morning. I parked for a few minutes, Wiley on my left, his Ruston Bearcats practicing football, not more than 100 yards away, behind Wiley and in front of me. I suppose that at about the same time, a few miles east, while sweaty teenagers pushed a sled and coaches blew whistles and life rolled on with all it’s grand possibilities, Kate was bravely taking Winston, a good soldier through Wiley’s sickness and beyond, to the doctor.

I hope that Kate’s wish from earlier came true. And not that it would have mattered so much to Wiley and Winston on this first night back together, but Tuesday night, the Cubs moved 15 games above .500. They beat Milwaukee, 6-3.
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