This weekend we took some time out.  This year, I wanted to be more active in exploring.  Exploring what?  Everything.  On Sunday we visited the Aspen Hill Pet Cemetery or to use its correct name:  Aspin Hill Memmorial Park. 

We got some pictures and even took the dogs with us.  The most interesting thing that we came across was the gravesite for ‘General Grant’ also called ‘Jiggs.’  He was the pit bull in the ‘Little Rascals/Our Gang’ films called ‘Petey.’  (Way too many names for one dog, I think).  Aspin Hill is also the final resting place of J. Edgar Hoover’s dogs (including Spee De Bozo), Rags (one of the first acclaimed ‘war dogs’ who was the 1st division’s mascot in WWI), and 40 humans who insisted upon being buried alongside their pets.   We didn’t find either Bozo or Rags but did find the graves of two of the couples who insisted on being buried with their pets.

Although the oldest grave we found was around 1920s, Aspin Hill is listed as America’s second oldest pet cemetary with over 40,000 of man’s beloved companions buried there.   I hadn’t realized it was so many.  What also caught my attention was the number of graves from the 30s.  This was during the Depression.  I can only imagine the expense and how special those animals were.  Although part of the park is obviously still in the process of being reclaimed from overgrowth, it is a nice, quiet place and definitely a little sad and run down in the older parts.   

We both found ourselves bawling over one gravestone that read:  “My heart is buried here”  and in the area of most recent burials is a memorial to Sherlock and Watsie, two beagles with an inscription that reads:

“If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane
We’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again.”