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Senseless theft hurts family

The thief who recently stole a headstone memorializing a family’s beloved English sheepdog must have been Scottish.
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The thief who recently stole a headstone memorializing a family’s beloved English sheepdog must have been Scottish.

“Whoever took it would have to be Scottish to appreciate what was written on the headstone,” said Laurie Jonasson, whose family gave Caber a home for the last 10 years of his life.

A caber is a large log tossed in traditional Scottish highland games to test a competitor’s strength.

Painted on the stolen headstone?

 “Caber, tossed into doggy heaven.”

The headstone remained in the same spot at the edge of the Jonasson property for seven years before someone took it last week.

Caber’s memorial is a chunk of granite the size of a loaf of bread. Jonasson’s children had stood by it almost every morning as they waited for the school bus.

Her daughter was the first to notice it went missing.

“What a stupid thing to do,” said Jonasson. “It means nothing to nobody except the kids, the ones that owned the dog.”

The family was going to place an ad in the newspaper chastising the perpetrator.

“There’s bad karma stealing headstones,” said Jonasson. “It’s a real lowlife thing to do. It’s pathetic. Do they have a dog named Caber who died?”

The large, shaggy Caber loved rounding up kids in the park. He was an awkward dog, often jumping over invisible fences, said Jonasson.

Jonasson and her husband own Sidrock Inc., which supplies stone for buildings, sculptures, fireplaces and, yes, headstones.

“We’re in the headstone business, so it’s a little odd,” said Jonasson. “If a person liked it that much, they could have come to the house and asked us to make one. We have plenty of granite laying around.”

Because the headstone was on the edge of the family property, a stranger who believed it didn’t belong to anyone could have removed it.

While the dog’s headstone had no real value, the sentimental value can’t be measured, said Jonasson.

It lay in an extraordinary place.

Nothing had really grown in the spot before the headstone was placed there. However, the spring after Caber died poppies started blooming around the headstone.

“It was a very special place. It kind of took on a life of its own.”

Whoever took it is probably long gone, added Jonasson.

“It’s beyond me why someone would want it sitting in their … I don’t even know where they’d put it,” she said, at a loss for words.