Obituaries

We Love You Miles Davis Moore

We had to say good-bye to our beloved Miles. He has given us 17 great years with him. I will admit that I didn’t want him. The decision to bring Miles into our life was all Angela’s and Cousin Kai. They would spend hours on Puppy Finder to find the right dog. He flew Delta from Missouri to Atlanta. Somehow they were about to send him to Hartford, CT. When Angela and Kai made it to the airport, some of the workers at Delta had him out of his crate and were playing with him. He is a handsome boy. When puppy Miles made it home, he was all of the cuteness but I was ready to open myself up to him even when he forced himself on me for a rub. He tried to walk up the first step up the stairs and he stumbled to the floor. Angela played with him and she set him up in his room to stay in the crate. Once she went to sleep, I did walk into the office area to look at him. I gave him a smile. When Angela woke up, he wasn’t in his crate. He somehow managed to escape and he was behind his crate and was gave a ferocious puppy growl and bark. The drugs had worn off. She spent the week trying to house train him and she was losing the battle. They would walk to the park not so far from our neighborhood and also in our neighborhood. Those were some peaceful walks. Miles wasn’t the only cocker spaniel in the neighborhood. There were these two sibling name Mya and Chewbacca. They would bark and growl at young Miles. Angela’s solution was to turn around and keep the peace. One day Angela needed me to walk Miles. I came across Mya and Chewbacca and they started to bark and growl. Angela trained Miles well to avoid conflict but I’m not Angela. I had him stand in place. I looked down at him and the spirit of his wolf ancestors came alive in him. He started to bark back and was ready to attack. Mya and Chewbacca were like this little dude is crazy and that was the first of many bark offs. Miles had to let them know. “There is a new king of Pinnacle Pointe”.

There are a lot of terms we could use to describe Miles. I would say that he was playing chess while we were playing checkers. We would bring him to Birmingham with us when we would come home. I would drive and Angela and Miles would in the front seat on the floor between Angela’s legs in the early years. We stopped by Burger King and Angela had a Whopper. Let her tell it “It was the best Whopper ever”. She wasn’t paying attention to him and he did this move where we think he might have licked it. He did enough to cause reasonable doubt and the Whopper was now his. We decided that maybe he needed to go to training class. We can’t just have him stealing food. She would try to get him to do something but Miles is willful. We looked at him and he looked at us and he looked at Mary. The only way I can describe his expression is “I’m Miles Davis!!” I’m glad that we were Petsmart Dog Training dropouts. I loved that he wasn’t a submissive and he was strong willed and intelligent.

Like other dogs he loved toys. Angela bought him a Kong and would fill it with peanut butter and biscuits. Didn’t I not tell you this little guy was intelligent? He would lick the peanut butter out the base of the Kong but leave the biscuit. When he was done with the peanut butter, he would take the Kong to the top of the stairs and drop the Kong down the stairs to get the biscuits out. Most dogs would spend about 15 minutes trying to get the biscuits out. It took Miles less than a minute. He would play with plastic bottles. We would throw the bottles and balls down the steps and he would go get them.

You would think that by this time that I was in love with Miles. I wasn’t but I did like him. Spring 2006, we had this woodpecker in our attic. Miles and I would go into the attic and look for it. This particular Sunday morning, I was having some great sleep and the woodpecker had to go. Miles and I went to the attic to go hunting. Well things didn’t go according to plan. I fell from the attic to the living room and when I awaken from my concussion all I could hear was hear him barking to the top of his lungs. Angela ran downstairs to check on me while Miles was still in the attic. She said. “Miles was looking down from the newly formed hole in the ceiling and he was looking down.” He was like somebody come get me out of this damn attic. I’m not going to follow the dumb human down that way. Angela went to the attic to rescue him but he didn’t wait. He leapt into her arms so she could rescue him sooner but he caused her to twist her knee. After about a 12-hour visit to the ER, I finally came back home. I looked at Miles and he had this look on his face like “Damn man you had a rough day.” He came over to be with dried blood on my face and a splint to secure my right thumb and he started to lick my hand. This is the day I fell in love with Miles.

We have had many adventures over these 17 years and I am going to cherish the memory of him. He has made such an indelible mark on our life and others that had the pleasure of truly knowing him. This doesn’t mean I won’t have any more ugly cries when I think about him. We have had plenty because he has touched us in such a way. I would like to thank Kai for convincing Angela to bring Miles into our life and being the first puppy sitter. I would like to thank the Doggie Hotel Team at Petsmart for taking care of our little guy when he was at Doggie Day Camp and when he couldn’t travel with us, and his veterinarian people at Banfield for taking care of him for these 17 years. His doggie aunties’ Laura O for watching him in the early years when we traveled, Lady Fee and Travae for spoiling him with food from the cookouts, and his God mommy Temeika Fairley. Temeika has done a great job of picking him up from the boarders when we were delayed from travel to make it back home and she probably spoiled and love on him as much as we did. We love you Miles Davis Moore.