Saturday, April 2, 2011

A dogs' tale

I don't know if I can write this post.  I am dying from a broken heart and crying so hard I can't see the monitor.  We are about to do something I swore I would never do in my entire life.


T.C.
Anyone who knows us knows our dogs are not just pets.  They truly are our children, they just happen to be wearing little furry dogsuits.  We have had a number of dog-children since we moved into this house 30 years ago.  We started with a female purebred Siberian Husky named T.C, who was about seven months old when we got her.  The teenager who owned her named her T.C. for Too Cool.  But he became more interested in girls than he was in his dog, and after several warnings, his mother sold her to us for $50.  We soon learned that T.C. actually stood for Trouble Coming.


Shadow
Next came a male stray who was mostly German Shepherd and we named him Shadow because he followed our every step.  Shadow was about nine months old when he wandered up to our house, filthy and hungry and with a load of buckshot in his butt.  Immediate Vet bills.  








Porkchop
Then came a stray who had been partially tamed by some friends of ours, but now they were moving and couldn't take her with them, so we took her.  She was just over a year old and already named Porkchop.  Porky was a 30 pound, furry something who looked as much like a fox as she did a dog and she was a medical disaster from the word go.  Our friends had her spayed, but it was such a botched up job she got a serious infection from it and almost died.  She also had heartworms when she came to live with us.  So we had her treated for the heartworms. Then came the emergency stomach surgery, and while she was recovering she broke one of her legs playing outside with the other dogs.  While we were keeping her in the house trying to get her leg mended, T.C. dumped an entire bucket of yellow paint on Porkchop, which, of course, involved a trip to the Vet to get the paint removed.  Porkchop also developed skin problems which we treated for years.  She was one gigantic Vet bill right after another, but we loved her, so we paid.


Maximilian Dexter Bear
Then we decided to get a male purebred Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppy, who we named Maximilion Dexter Bear, but, of course, we just called him Max.  That was an appropriate name it turned out, since Max finally topped out over 100 pounds.  His favorite playtoys were the logs we used in our fireplace.  He would steal them from the rack and carry them around all over the backyard.  He could fit three regulation size tennis balls in his mouth and you would never know they were there.  We finally had our full complement of children, two boys and two girls as well as two purebreds and two mutts.  Things were pretty good until Max starting growing up.  Then he and Shadow starting having some rather heated discussions about who was top dog.  Bud and I had to break up a serious dogfight only one time, but once was enough.


Dogs are pack animals.  If you have one dog, you and your dog are a pack to your dog.  If you have two dogs, particularly one of each gender, you and they are a pack but the male dog will usually be dominant over the female.  If the dogs are the same gender, there will be one who is more dominant, but that may not necessarily result in a power struggle.  Every time you add another dog to the pack, you change the pack dynamic and the results are often unpredictable.  By the time you are up to four dogs, it can get to be a bit of a sticky wicket.  When Max and Shadow started vying for top dog position, we originally solved it by having Max neutered.  We had already had Shadow neutered because he wasn't purebred and there was no possibility we wanted him to breed.  For a short while Bud thought he might like to breed Max, but once the fighting started, he quickly changed his mind.  Since then, there has never been any question.  All of our animal companions are neutered as soon as it is physically possible.  It keeps a pretty good lid on the behavioral issues and it makes certain no more unwanted animals are added to the already outrageous population.  I believe Max would have eventually won out over Shadow in the top dog department (Max was a whole lot bigger) but Shadow enjoyed climbing over our fence and running loose, no matter how many ways we tried to stop that behavior.  Shadow climbing the fence resulted in his early death at the age of five.  


Zeke
After Shadow died we got another little male mixed breed puppy and named him Ezekiel, but called him Zeke.  Zeke looked to be mostly miniature Doberman.  We never had any dominance problems with Zekie, he just never wanted to be top dog in any pack, so he never fought with any of the other dogs about anything.  He was one of the most problem free dogs I have ever had the pleasure to know.






Niki
T.C. lasted until she was 13.  By then she was completely deaf and almost blind.  We kept her until it became obvious she no longer wanted to go on.   We got another purebred Siberian Husky, but this time we got a male and named him Niki.  The breeder told us male Huskies are not nearly as wacko as the females, so we figured we give it a try.  I don't think Nik was a good example though, because he was the most perfect dog a person ever could have asked for.


Six months after we had T.C. put down, we had to also euthanize Porkchop.   She found a hole in our fence and got out.  Apparently she got hit by a car, because the friend who was watching the dogs while we were in Maryland for the weekend, said he found her at the end of our driveway, and she was unable to use her back legs.  He took her to the 24 hour/weekend emergency clinic and they x-rayed her.  Because she had been on Prednisone for so long, her bones were very brittle and  her entire hips and back legs had shattered from whatever hit her.  She was also 13, and it just didn't seem to make any sense to try to repair that much damage at her advanced age with all of her health problems too.  Then, six months later it was Max.  He was only ten, but had been suffering from serious hip dysplasia for half his life.  We gave him prescription medication and glucosamine chondroitin for years, but when he was finally unable to get up and down the steps from the deck to the yard, we knew it was time.


Trixie
Next came a female mixed breed puppy someone found stranded in the turn lane of a busy six lane thoroughfare in Greensboro.  She took the puppy to our Vet's office on the same day I told the Vet we were interested in adopting a female puppy if he knew of one.  So the Vet immediately called us and that's how we got Trixie.  She was about nine weeks old, and appeared to be a mix of husky and shepherd.  She was a goofball.  I have never laughed so hard at the antics of any dog, and I have to say Trixie saved my sanity.  After losing three babies over the course of a year, I needed someone to bring some joy back into my life and Trixie sure took care of that.


To be continued ...  

1 comment:

  1. Thx for visiting my blog Carla. Just wanted to clarify that you don't need a Kindle to purchase my eBook. There are free Kindle apps for your computer or smartphone.

    Your dogs sound so amazing. I'm afraid to read what you're going to write next :( ...

    ReplyDelete