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I'm not going to post this in Fiction, because I didn't write them. To be honest, I don't know where to put them. These are some of my favorite dog poems. They're old, but they're good and I guarantee that "Rags" will have you in tears, or d*mn near. I know it almost brought a tear to my eye.


A Malamute Dog by Pat O’Cotter

You can’t tell me God would have Heaven
So a man couldn’t mix with his friends
That we are doomed to meet disappointment
When we come to the place the trail ends.

That would be a low-grade sort of Heaven
And I’d never regret a d*mned sin
If I rush up to the gates white and pearly
And they don’t let my Malamute in.

For I know it would never be homelike
No matter how golden the strand
If I lose out that pal-loving feeling
Of a Malamute’s nose on my hand.



Rags by Edmund Vance Cooke

They called him Rags, he was just a cur
But twice on the Western Line,
That little old bunch of faithful fur
Had offered his life for mine.

And all he got was bones and bread
And the leaving of soldiers' grub,
But he'd give his heart for a pat on the head,
A friendly tickle or rub.

And Rags got home with the regiment,
And then, in the breaking away--,
Well, whether they stole him, or whether he went,
I am not prepared to say.

But we mustered out, some to beer and gruel,
And some to sherry and shad,
And I went back to the Sawbones School,
Where I was an undergrad.

One day they took us budding M.D.'s
To one of those institutes
Where they demonstrate every new disease
By means of bisected brutes.

They had one animal tacked and tied
And slit like a full-dressed fish,
With his vitals pumping away inside
As pleasant as one might wish.

I stopped to look like the rest, of course,
And the beast's eyes leveled mine;
His short tail thumped with a feeble force,
And he uttered a tender whine.

It was Rags, yes, Rags! who was martyred there,
Who was quartered and crucified,
And he whined that whine which is doggish prayer
And he licked my hand--and died.

And I was no better in part nor whole
Than the gang I was found among,
And his innocent blood was on the soul
Which he blessed with his dying tongue.

Well! I've seen men go to courageous death
In the air, on sea, on land!
But only a dog would spend his breath
In a kiss for his murderer's hand.
And if there's no heaven for love like that,
For such four-legged fealtly--well!
If I have any choice, I tell you flat,
I'll take my chance in hell.