The world lost something special Tuesday as the oldest dog passed on. Maggie, an Australian Kelpie owned by dairy farmer Brian McLaren, was unofficially aged at 30 years old. That translates into a whopping 210 human years. She had lost much of her vision and hearing but was in remarkably good health right up until her death.

McLaren purchased Maggie when she was just a pup and his son, now 34, was a wee lad of 4. Somewhere over the three decades he lost Maggie’s papers, so she can’t officially take over from Bluey, an Australian cattle dog that died in 1939 at the age of 29, as the oldest dog in recorded history.

But for an animal that comes to represent so much to a family, can even 30 years be enough? The following quotes, all featured in the Sporting Classics book Passages, seek to lament and console on the occasion of a dog’s death.

“You get too fond of a dog. Not until after his death do you realize how much he meant to you. I sometimes wonder if the pleasure in owning a dog is worth the misery caused by his death.”

– J.A. Hunter, Hunter, 1952

“At this spot are deposited the remains of those who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This praise would be unmeaning flattery if inscribed over human ashes, but is just tribute to the memory of some dogs.”

– Unknown Author, written on a sign overlooking Big Fish Lake in Pasco County, Florida

“The perfection of a life with a gundog, like the perfection of an autumn, is disturbing because you know, even as it begins, that it must end. Time bestows the gift and steals it in the process.”

– George Bird Evans, An Affair with Grouse, 1982

“Dogs’ lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you’re going to lose a dog, and there’s going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can’t support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There’s such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love while always being aware it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of these illusions.”

– Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year, 2007

“But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot, he will come to you when you call; come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel, they shall not growl at him nor resent his coming, for he belongs there. People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his foot-fall, who hear no whimper — people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them, for you shall know something that is hidden from them. The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.”

– Ben Hur Lampman, for the Portland Oregonian; reprinted in

Labrador Retriever: Friend and Worker by S. Kip Farrington Jr., 1976

“A dog does not live as long as a man and this natural law is the fount of many tears. If a boy and puppy might grow to manhood and doghood together, and together grow old, and so in due course die, full many a heartache might be avoided. But the world is not so ordered, and dogs will die and men will weep for them so long as there are dogs and men.”

– Ben Ames Williams, Bird Dog Book, 1989

“A good dog lives forever in the heart.”

– Donald McCaig, Nop’s Trials, 1992

For these and more great quotes on dogs, fishing, hunting, and the outdoor life, pick up a copy of Passages from the Sporting Classics Store today.