Periodically, I am seized with the notion of getting a dog. It’s not that I really want a dog so much as I want to get a dog. I enjoy the process of getting--just about anything.

My friend, Catherine, is my personal designee for rationality and restraint. Her task at the moment is to restrain me from getting a dog. Several days ago I felt the tug of the hound. Catherine told me, quite sternly, that a dog is a seven to twelve year commitment, so, what was I thinking?

I certainly was not thinking about a seven to twelve year commitment. I’m more of a live-in-the-moment person, so I don’t think in increments of seven and twelve. Catherine does, and by all accounts her life is in better shape than mine is which is why she is my personal designee for rationality and restraint. And so we come full circle.

Reason, as they say, prevailed thanks to Catherine. I didn’t get a dog. As a result however, I have come to the conclusion that there is a market niche for a loaner-dog service. The client would specify the particulars: large, medium, or small, long hair or short hair, male or female, will sleep on the bed but not under the covers, etc. You check out your dog, keep it for two weeks or until you remember why getting a dog is not a good idea and more specifically how much a dog’s presence upsets the cat.

Loaner-dogs. It could work. We have loaner-cars and loaner-caskets. (Betcha didn’t know that one.) You borrow rather than purchase a loaner-casket. Liturgical churches cover the coffin with a pall instead of gladiolas. A pall is an embellished, brocade cover not unlike a bedspread. Putting a covering that large on a container of ashes would look as ridiculous as putting Princess Di’s wedding gown on a four-year old—hence the loaner-casket.

The mortuary puts the container of ashes in the casket securing it so it won’t tumble about unsettling the mourners. They deliver it to the church, drape it with the pall, and everything is “done decently and in order.”

The alternative is to put the container of ashes on a tea table. Personally, I’m going for the pall and the loaner-casket. It trumps the tea table every time if you're looking for a majestic send off.

As if life and death weren’t strange enough, the mortuary industry recently coined the word cremains for human ashes. The first time I heard the term I laughed out loud which was inappropriate given where I was at the time.

Who made the executive decision to cobble together another word for ashes? What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall for that marketing discussion. I bet no one in the room could keep a straight face.

It is an insult to our collective intelligence to presume that hearing cremains instead of ashes will mitigate the fact that Paw Paw’s dead, toasted, and in a small box—unless he’s come loose from his moorings and is knocking about in a loaner-casket.

Cremains indeed—I snort with derision.