Re-cur—Get another dog again?

I fell in love with basset hounds when I was in the ninth grade. Waiting outside for the school doors to open, my best friend and I noticed a droopy dog across the street. We became smitten and named it “Harold.” We made up a song about basset hounds to the tune of “Jesus Loves the Little Children”:

Jesus loves the little bassets

All the bassets of the world.

Their long ears and their big feet,

Golly gee, they’re really neat!

Jesus loves the little bassets of the world.

Soon, we noticed “Harold” surrounded by a litter of puppies, so we renamed her “Haroldine.”

My mother was strenuously anti-pet, so I did not adopt my first basset, Noble, until I left home. That basset was stolen from my yard one night. Years later, I adopted my second basset, Beaumont, while in graduate school in Carbondale, Illinois. Beaumont’s story is a sad one which I will leave untold.

When I got a job teaching college in Poultney, Vermont, I adopted Herself the Elf, my soul-mate basset. I spent many happy basset years with Elf. As she grew into a senior basset, I adopted Hermia. Hermia grew, Elf crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and finally Hermia crossed the Rainbow Bridge, as well, in 2007.

Occasionally, people ask me if I am going to get another dog, and I wonder if I get another dog if I will “re-cur,“ once again playing around with prefixes, as I enjoy doing. However, since I am a devoted basset lover, if I get another hound, I will not be “re-curring,” as the “American Heritage Dictionary” defines a cur as “A dog considered to be inferior or undesirable; a mongrel.”

However, the word “recur” as defined in the dictionary basically means a repetition or returning to something. So if I were to get another basset, I would be recurring in a way, returning to being owned by a basset or repeating the experience of living and loving a basset. But as for now, in exploring retirement I have chosen to remain empty-nested of bassets.