If you’ve been around Robin Hood’s barn a time or two, you may remember “Sixteen Tons,” sung in a booming bass voice by one Tennessee Ernie Ford. The line I have in mind goes, “St. Peter don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.”

I remember the song when I look about my disordered basement. What if a hooded figure wielding a scythe should show up before I get this wretched place organized and swept? St. Peter, I implore you, don’t call me until I get this mess cleaned up. (It’s another way of saying I’d like to live forever, since eternity wouldn’t be time enough. Could procrastination be the secret to immortality?)

Among the boxes in the basement still unpacked from our move three years ago, I came across a small black plastic container with a homely label which read, “Pet Cremains Of Andy Gurley.” Andy, a springer spaniel, died some 10 years ago. We’d planned to give him a full, formal Episcopal funeral, but we just hadn’t gotten around to it. Putting things off is a family trait.

Perhaps it was an expression of our unwillingness to let Andy go. Andy, it happens, was the best dog who ever lived. By rights, he ought to have been named Sir Andrew or Saint Andrew, for he was nature’s nobleman. As a hunting dog, he was high-spirited, indefatigable. He showed his mettle on his first hunt when a shot duck fell on an iced-over pond. While the other dogs stood trembling at the edge, Andy plunged forth and retrieved the bird, though the ice broke underneath him and he nearly drowned.

But Andy was at heart a gentle soul. He loved to chase squirrels, but when he got close enough to grab one, he’d slow down to let it escape. It was the sport, not the kill, that interested him.

When our daughter’s pet turtle burrowed under his sleeping pad, all Andy did to show his displeasure was to utter a “humph.” Her pet bunny often helped itself to Andy’s dog food. Any other dog would have snapped its neck with a shake. But Andy only watched with doleful eyes. At last, without so much as a growl, he’d rouse himself and exit to another room to spare himself of the disgrace.

His good looks and sad, philosophical look lent him a kind of charisma. Wherever we went, he attracted admirers, patiently enduring toddlers who yanked on his ears. Once, two dogs attacked him without provocation, perhaps sensing that he wouldn’t fight back. Their owner’s take was that I ought to have my dog on a leash. My response was loudly to call her an “idiot,” modifying that noun with the usual off-color adjective. The neighborhood kids were filled with wonder. “Did you hear Mr. Gurley last night?”

In mid-career, Andy almost died by my hand. It happened when I broke one of hunting’s cardinal roles and foolishly shot at a crippled pheasant running on the ground. The moment I fired, Andy emerged from some heavy brush between me and the bird and intercepted the shot. I carried him to the roadside. Someone ran and got a car and we rushed him to the local animal hospital. An X-ray revealed that he’d taken at least 20 pellets. The vet thought he’d be OK.

That night I walked him. He ate a little food. He seemed to be OK. But the next morning, our daughter woke us up at six. Andy was breathing hard. His gums were white. Our own heroic veterinarian got out of bed and met us at his office. Andy was fading fast. The vet drew blood from his own dog, gave Andy a transfusion and saved his life. I can’t remember ever praying for anything harder.

In his later years, Andy developed arthritis. But his youth was always reawakened by a hunt. He could still go all day at the only pace he knew. One day we watched him sitting at the side of a pond looking across the water. For a long time he sat there, peering. It was clear that he was thinking. Then suddenly he leaped up, sprang into the water and swam to the other side. There was nothing there to fetch, no edible goal. It was an expression of freedom and purposeless delight.

In his dotage, my wife took him to sun in the church yard while she tended the garden flowers. When she looked up, Andy was gone. She retraced the route back home. No sign of Andy. It was the morning of the Nebraska football game. Crazed red-clad fans had overrun the town. Susan feared for his life. At last, she located him at the animal shelter. A thoughtful police man had rescued him as he regally crossed Ninth Street, backing up traffic for a block or more.

The day came when Andy could no longer walk. We called the same vet who’d saved his life and asked him to administer the fatal dose. It took only seconds to race through his veins. But just before Andy succumbed, his body arched if he were trying to out-leap death, or to flush one final bird.

I love Oscar, Max and Phoebe, our present dogs. But I don’t expect to look on Andy’s like again.

Few human beings could claim to possess more goodness. The end of this year seemed like a fitting time to pay our final respects. It was overdue, and it would be one step in dealing with the disheveled basement. We sought permission from the owner of the pond where Andy had made his memorable swim. We took the little black box to the shore and distributed his ashes to the wind.

I like to imagine him swimming once more to the other side, or hunting forever where it is always autumn and the grasses golden in the light of the January sun.

George Gurley, who lives in rural Baldwin, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.