One of the toughest things about graduating from college was saying goodbye to the friends I’d made. Fortunately there were only three of them, so it didn’t take too long. 

          A friend I’ll miss a great deal is a girl named Kimberly Burcham. We’ve had numerous classes together and both worked here at WSAZ, where she earned everyone’s respect and admiration with her strong work ethic and her character, and faithful WSAZ.com readers will recall Tony Cavalier’s mentioning of her in one of his latest blogs. She recently left and took a position as a reporter for WYMT in Hazard (!), Kentucky. 

          When we had our first class together three years ago, I remember hearing her name on the roll call and immediately being struck. Her last name of Burcham had such a sweet ring to it, I decided it would be the perfect name for my newly born dog.

         The pup was the lovechild of one of my family’s beagles and our neighbor’s overly friendly golden lab. Unplanned pregnancies can often result in the most joyous of offspring, and this was certainly the case with this animal. The two breeds mixed well, producing a marvelous creature that would earn the envy of any pet-owner. The happiness on her face when she runs around our yard makes me consider the irony that the only reason she exists at all is because the cage we kept her mother in wasn’t strong enough to hold out a lustful intruder.

          The two Burchams have much in common. For example, both like chicken. However, as far as I am aware, only Burcham the Dog takes pleasure in rolling around with dead animal carcasses.   

          So anyway, practically the first sentence I ever spoke to the Human Burcham was, “I named my dog after you.” You can imagine her wariness of me for the next couple years, but gradually we became close pals, and the week before she moved to Hazard she came out to my family’s home for a photo-op with her canine counterpart, resulting in pictures I’ll be sure to cherish for years and years, probably even more-so after the first Burcham dies, which will hopefully be the dog, seeing as how humans tend to generally live longer than dogs.