It was always showtime with Sandy’s dish-licking dance

You pull something out of a cardboard box — stinking, totally helpless.

You feed it and rearrange your sleep and your life and rearrange your idea of order and the smell-good house.

Pretty soon it’s dragging you along the asphalt, pulling your shoulder into a straight line, altering your neck muscles and sending you to the chiropractor.

And now you work chiropractic adjustment into your life, too. Because you’re not about to give up the shoulder pulls or the satisfaction that comes when you’re walking it and it knowingly does its business in front of the neighbor you don’t like.

Because you reached into the cardboard box, this is what you get: pain and satisfaction.

For us, it was Sandy. Andy’s Idaho Sandy was his formal name, signifying our youngest son’s ownership and the geographic location of the cardboard box — Rexburg, Idaho, to be precise.

We were a young family of five. He was a blond cocker spaniel with all the qualities of a heartworm. At the very heart of our lives, an insidious love for Sandy infested each of us. We were incurable.

Sandy was the Original Plate Lick Dancer. When any of us allowed him to lick our plate, he would roll and scoot and rub and slink along the carpet for two full minutes when he was finished.

My friends, reading this, will never dine at my house again. Because my confession is this: We, all of us in the Clawson household, invited Sandy to lick our plate every chance we got.

His dancing was that good.

And that was important to us.

He moved with us twice and never complained. He waited up nights for three teen-agers as they each, in their turn, decided how late was late enough to sufficiently freak out mom and dad.

He vacationed with us on the Oregon coast and in the mountains. One of our favorite pictures is of him in the front seat of the pickup in Okanogan, eating an ice cream cone after a long day of watching us fish.

Yes, we have been known to buy Sandy his own ice cream cone. We are a family with some boundary issues, I admit. But it was hot. And it was his vacation, too — right?

Twelve years outside of Rexburg, and Sandy wasn’t plate lick dancing anymore. He was tired. His family had dwindled down to a reliable pair of adults and three come-and-go adult versions of the children who used to fish and run on beaches and call out his name.

Last Friday, the end came for Andy’s Idaho Sandy. His family came round to offer their respects and try to move on. But all of us agreed that there just isn’t any way to do that.

There just isn’t any way to get something out of your heart once it’s inside that deep. A love like that just keeps on dancing around.

This is my tribute to you, Sandy. You were the dog everybody always wants to have. You were the pain and satisfaction we are all looking for, all of the time.

We went to the North Snohomish County Animal Shelter in Arlington recently and walked away with a 1-year-old female border collie mix.

Somebody reached into the cardboard box and got more than they could handle, Sandy.

In your honor, we’re going to try and make her life as good as you made ours.

So long.

Bridget Clawson has worked for Snohomish County government for 11 years and has lived in Arlington for that long, too. She is now human resources director. She and husband, Ted, have three college-age children, Benjamin, Andrew and Caroline.