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Showing posts with label Dogs of My Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dogs of My Life. Show all posts
Long ago, I did a series of "Dogs of my Life." At that time, I wanted to share this picture, but I could not find it. I came across it this week. The reason it kept "disappearing" is that it was earlier than I realized. Butchy must have only been about two years old when this was taken. Link to more of Butchy Boy II's story below.
Of course, I got in trouble for holding the dog while wearing a white skirt. More to the point, why would anyone think that I should be allowed to wear a white skirt? I have no memory of the outfit. The more I think about it, the greater the mystery of what I was wearing. I started making almost all of my clothes in 5th grade, and I KNOW I made nothing like this. It must have been something Granny bought.
The picture was taken at Christmas 1959, so I was in 7th grade.
The marbletop table in the picture is the one I have the Thanksgiving display on that I showed you a few days ago, and that is the same couch I still have, but two reupholstery jobs ago. The real surprise is that I remember one upholstery pattern prior to the stripes I'm sitting on! There was a matching chair, but it has bitten the dust.
In other news... I worked 2 hours on the pantry, but it only looks worse because I emptied more shelves to wash things. Need to get shelf paper before I'm putting them back. I worked for a client, went to the historical society to ask a question (no answer yet), and the words in Vacation from DMS are up to 14,211. I went to bell choir practice. It rained all day, so no walk at all happened. It feels like I don't have much to show for a whole day.
Today has to be in honor of Maggie Millicent Sweet Potato Pie. She took a fast turn for the worse last night, and by this morning we knew it was time to say goodbye. No regrets (not that this makes it easier). I promised myself I wouldn't wait too long this time and cause another dog a lot of suffering just so I could have one more day.
I am going to show you pictures you've never seen before (I'm pretty sure), in honor of the sweet and funny dog she was. She's been the only dog of mine you've known if you are a follower of this blog. But, you probably don't know how she came to be mine.
She began life under questionable circumstances, and she and her littermates were left at the Ann Arbor Humane Society. She was the only one who lived, and it cost a lot of money to keep her alive. She had double pneumonia. I had just lost Chips, and wasn't really looking for another dog. Indeed, Maggie did not become mine for a long time. However, she did come to the extended family of some friends I was staying with while finishing a grad school project. Therefore, I was a part of her life from the time she was about eight weeks old. With a lot of medication and care, she recovered. She was also born with really bad hips. And she couldn't ride in a car without being given doggy Dramamine. I have no pictures of her when she was really little.
The friends, who eventually got full-time care of Maggie, found this picture of her. I think she might be about eight months old in this one. Please notice the purple collar.
That collar was bought for her by her first owner, who loves purple. Me... it's the second-lowest color on my list (pink is worse). However, the daughter of her first owner pretty much grew up with Maggie and sort of always thought of Maggie as her dog, just on permanent loan to me. So I kept the collar. She has worn it ever since, and it will now go in the drawer with all her predecessor's collars. I'll always know which one is hers!
Maggie wasn't getting enough exercise in the city, and friends Phil and Nan really wanted me to take her home, but I didn't think she was the dog for me. Her bad hips would keep her from backpacking. Chips had gone everywhere in the car with me; I couldn't see having a dog that threw up in under two miles. And her yellow eyes gave me the willies.
But when she was almost one and a half, it came down to: Maggie would either come with me or go back to the pound. I decided to give her a try. I had her hips x-rayed. They were terrible. One side was so bad the ball was just barely engaging the socket. I hoped that more exercise would improve the muscle tone. She loved chasing this toy, which came to be known as the "red ring." And we took two walks a day. She quickly gained strength in her back legs, although the vet warned me to never put a pack on her. She got so she could ride about 30 miles without barfing. Not great, but better.
No one knew what kind of dog she was. The pound knew that her mom was a yellow lab, but they thought the dad must be a red bone hound. Not a bad guess, but every so often someone would look at her and say something like, "She's one of those dogs from Europe, I don't remember what they are called." One day, someone said, "I know what that dog is. She's Hungarian, a Vizsla."
So I began an internet search and discovered that Vizslas are a Royal Breed. She fit the characteristics perfectly, except that she doesn't like water. I especially liked their nickname of "Velcro Vizsla," because they like to always be touching their human. Nan called her "the red worm," because she always wanted to worm her way into a lap. Speaking of:
That picture was taken in 2006, and you can see that her face was already almost all white. Also, oddly, her eyes darkened over the years and lost their pure gold tone. When she was overweight she looked like her lab mama. But too much weight was bad for her hips, so we worked hard to keep her slim. When she was slim she looked like a perfect Vizsla.
She had the softest ears of any of my dogs. They were like warm silk. She loved to have them petted, and it was a pleasant thing to do. Those ears would flap when she ran, and I got a few pictures of how cute that looked.
Although she always loved her day hikes (right up until the last couple of months), it was no great hardship on either of us to not take her backpacking. I did take her camping a few times, and she didn't like it. She didn't like being cold or wet. She didn't like being outside at night. She was always nervous in the tent, and didn't catch on to camp etiquette the way Chips did. So I never felt bad for leaving her home. She was also not the one-person dog that Chips had been, so she happily stayed with Om.
The last good picture of her was taken the weekend we visited Chuck and Sylvia in December. You can see that at Engage, Embrace, Enjoy if you wish.
I want to share a video with you. This was made by Wendy Francisco, wife of Don Francisco, a long-time Christian musician and singer. Many of his songs have touched me over my adult life. One that particularly helps me is I'll Never Let Go of Your Hand. But this video is about DoG and GoD. Very cute, very short, very true. Enjoy
Oh, and the rest of Maggie's nickname? I think "Sweet Potato" is obvious from her color. But I've always known she was a sweet potato PIE because of the whipped cream at the end of her tail!
The Quality part of the day was definitely not the final goodbye, but I have many great memories of our time together. Quite a few people have already told me on Facebook that you felt you knew her too. She's gone on to the next part of the journey. Safe travels, Sweet Maggie.
Although this puts two family posts in a row (not bad, but I don't usually do it), it's been quite a while since I brought you the next canine in this series. The letter is right, and the timing is good.
Next up we have Charlotte, or to be more precise, "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte Pork Chop M&M." She has the longest name of any of our dogs. That's for sure!
She came to us in 1972. That's a story in itself. Dear little Bonnie had only been gone for about a week. A friend of ours showed up at dinnertime one evening with a little furry bundle. Being a teenager, it didn't seem silly to him to set her down right in the middle of the table.
I was really torn. I definitely wasn't ready for another dog. But how could I resist this:
She stayed, of course. She was as good and faithful as the breed is known for. She was never too exuberant or too shy or too anything. She was just a really good dog. In those years with small boys I had much less time to bond with dogs, of course.
And, she is the only dog that got included in a professional family picture. Well, we only had one of those ever done. Nevertheless. Here she is, being good.
One summer, we were away and some friends were watching the dogs. The dogs got out, and Charlotte was killed in the road. Our oldest boy (on the left, the one we no longer hear from) found her and buried her under the boys' tree house.
See Dogs of My Life this link will open the series in a new tab
Sweet little Bonnie was only with us for a couple of years. It's very sad. I have to tell you that I'm a sucker for hounds. The problem is, of course, that they are very headstrong. For some reason we decided to get a second dog. We were trying to start a family without any luck, and decided in 1970 that we would be a family with pups for a while. You've already met Jeremiah.
Bonnie Blanche was half coon hound, half beagle. She was the first female dog I'd ever owned, and she was just a sweet little cuddler. Soft hound-dog ears, and always ready for a little treat.
Isn't it strange that a dog will curl up and sleep in front of a cardboard fireplace? This picture is taken in a different house from the first picture. In December 1971 we moved just 3 miles to the property we are now on. There are so many stockings because Omer's parents came for Christmas, along with his "baby sister" Kathy (Lyghtekeeper- who died in August 2009- some of you may remember that). That leaves two stockings to account for- of course two of them were for Bonnie and Jeremiah. Pictures show that Loretta was here too, and maybe their brother came as well.
Dear little Bonnie was indeed part hound though. She had a tendency to roam sometimes. This is the last picture taken of her. She met her fate in the road the next summer. It's pretty appalling how many of my dogs died that way, but back then...people who lived in the country just did their best to train a dog about the dangers of the road, and then the dog was expected to take charge of its own destiny.
It's very sad, and I still feel guilty about Bonnie. She didn't die instantly, but crawled out of the road into the tall grass. We didn't find her until the next day. If we had found her right away, could she have been saved? We'll never know.
Meet Jeremiah, the third dog of my life, but the first that I owned as an adult, and had full responsibility for. He was a gift from Om's boss, on our first Christmas together, in 1968. His nickname was "Germ." We lived in married student housing, and many of the others had children. They loved having a little furry puppy to play with.
It was very difficult for the kids to understand why they shouldn't play in the street, since it was a little-traveled gravel road. But one day, they were all playing in the road, and a car clipped Jeremiah. He wasn't even a year old.
He mostly had a head injury. Just as it's not a good sign when this happens to humans, it wasn't great for a dog, either. He did recover, but he was never quite the same. The children really understood about the road after that!
The next trauma was one of the more bizarre stories of my life. We were getting ready to move to Michigan, in the fall of 1969. We were doing errands in Marion, Indiana, about 30 miles from where we lived. We were on the sidewalk, and a larger dog came out of nowhere and they started fighting. Jeremiah was losing, and he ran away. We hunted and hunted, but could not find him. We knew he was hurt, there was blood on the sidewalk.
We had to move to Michigan without him. A friend from Indiana kept hunting for him. I was crushed, with the intensity of the young. I prayed and prayed for that dog, as if he were a human. And, in what still seems miraculous to me, a full month later, our friend Harold found him hiding in an abandoned basement. He was thin, frightened, and his coat was matted with partially healed wounds. Harold made the six-hour drive to bring Jeremiah to us.
Here he is, at the first place we lived in Michigan. He looks fine, but he was always strange after this. He was fine with us, but would get spacey from time to time. Not exactly a seizure, but something not quite right.
This is just a nice shot of him.
Here's one of the last pictures. He's wearing jingle bells on his collar for Christmas. Talking about past dogs is always going to be sad in the end, because "past" means that they have all died. Yet, this death was surrounded with more angst than others. I had to choose to have him put to sleep. After we adopted Steve, it became apparent that Jeremiah was not going to be able to adapt to having a baby around. He actually bit baby Steve in the face, and that was the wake-up call.
My head knew that there was no other choice between the baby and the dog. My heart couldn't understand why I had to choose to surrender the dog that had been almost miraculously given back to me.
This is the second installment in Dogs of my Life. Meet Butchy Boy II. While Butchy Boy I began as my parents' dog and ended up as mine, Butchy Boy II started out belonging to me, but essentially ended up being my parents', as I went away to college.
After first Butchy died, I wouldn't even think about another dog for months, but by winter I was more than ready for another canine friend. But I was a child who did not like change in any form. The "new" dog had to be black and white, male, and was going to be named Butchy Boy. A girl in my class said that they had puppies, but she lived w-a-a-a-a-y out in the country. She rode Bus #12 to school... Bus #12 was often late to arrive. If the weather was bad, Bus #12 was dismissed early. Sometimes, Bus #12 students never even made it to school. My mom was not thrilled to be attempting to locate the Cooper's house in the snow, but we finally made it, and I chose one small black and white puppy. We seem to have no pictures, however, until he was grown.
Second Butchy was reputed to be 3/4 English Setter and 1/4 Beagle. We can guarantee that he was pure Mutt. I don't recall that I was involved a lot with seriously training him. I think that Dad just was so used to that role, that he did most of the work, although I helped and "played" at dog training.
The beagle part of Butchy's genetic makeup was strong, and Dad would always comment with mild disgust that he was just pure hound. He was definitely headstrong and not anything like first Butchy. This dog was fun to play with, but he would run away if he was allowed to run loose. He could easily break dog chains, so Dad found a cow chain in the barn. When Butchy was inside he was a good family dog. When he was outside, he had to be chained, and was equally comfortable in his dog house under the porch, insulated with hay.
Here's my favorite picture of this dog. He looks quite peaceful. However, he was high energy, and really needed more exercise than even I could give him. Throughout high school I got up early before school, most days, and took him for a run the length of our farm and back. One morning, Butchy chased a woodchuck down its hole. I let him go digging for it, and discovered that it wasn't a woodchuck that had ducked underground! Butchy caught the spray right in the face, and I was close enough that I had to go to school with some pretty unpleasant perfume. Yes, it was a skunk!
When I went off to college, of course, I had to leave Butchy at home. He was lonesome, and would break his chain fairly regularly. Mom and Dad usually found him two miles away at the school, playing with the kids. Of course, that involved crossing roads, and on one of those adventures, he connected with a car. Mom found him, and brought him back to the farm to bury.
As we continue this series, you will probably be appalled at the number of my pets whose lives were ended by cars. Buck up, and get prepared for it. I've always lived on major highways, and dogs just seem to carry their knowledge of the dangers of the road only so far. They will stay off the blacktop until they smell or see something attractive on the other side.
Anyway, second Butchy was a good transition dog for me. I learned how to train a dog. I learned that not all dogs were going to be as special as first Butchy. It was verified that I am very much a dog person.
I'll leave you with a quirk that should give you a chuckle. Whenever Dad was digging potatoes from the garden, second Butchy would bark and bark (he was chained on that side of the house), until Dad would throw him a raw potato to eat.
Today I am starting a series that will show up occasionally until we have worked our way through the dogs I have owned throughout my life. Today we start with the dog my parents owned when I was born, Butchy Boy I. Technically, this makes it their dog, not mine, but read on...
Dad always said that he thought Butchy was mostly Field Spaniel. True Field Spaniels are a solid color, while this dog was black and white, but Dad thought that his traits fit that breed best. His history was that Dad had found him abandoned in the woods across the road from our house. Dad always thought that he had been abused.
Butchy Boy I is the other dog, of all the ones in my life, who is so special to me that I can't separate him from Chips... to choose which is best.
He liked surveying the world from the porch rail. See a head in the background. That is my dad, and now I'll show you what Dad is doing.
Yup, that's me. Of course, I don't remember any of this part of the story, but I am told that the dog took to me immediately. While I was still tiny enough to not roll off of things Mom would put me in the Boston Rocker (on which Irene's afghan was displayed a few months ago). Butchy would sit beside the rocker and watch me. The first time Granny (Mom's mother) came to visit, the dog would not let her go near me in the rocking chair until Mom put me in Granny's arms, to show the dog that it was ok.
The dog was my constant companion. As an only child, in the country (that's our barn in the background), I didn't really even know there were other little kids in the world. This isn't such a great picture of the dog, but it shows how we spent a lot of time for a lot of years... together.
My dad was continually amazed by the devotion of Butchy Boy to me. Actually the thing that amazed him most was that the dog would accept pieces of powdered donut from me. He wouldn't ever eat sweets apart from that one exception. And, although he certainly looks a bit distressed, he always allowed me to play dress-up with him. I never was a girly-girl, so this wasn't a common activity, but you can easily see that it happened occasionally!
In between playtime with me, Butchy was a fine hunting-dog companion for Dad, and they brought home many a pheasant and rabbit for dinners.
Dad kept trying to prepare me to lose Butchy Boy. He was (estimated) 14 years old and I was 9. But what can prepare you to lose your soul-mate? He got careless crossing the road one day. There was a screech of brakes and Dad yelled, "There goes Butchy." (Yup, I'm crying right now, 52 years later.)
I shut myself in my closet for 12 hours and refused to come out. The devastation was total. I guess I finally got hungry. There isn't any gentle ending to this story. It was just the end of life as I knew it- the first major trauma of my young life. We all have them, and they prepare us for the future.
Every child should be as fortunate as I was to have such a wonderful, faithful friend.
This is the 10th anniversary of the day that one of the two most special dogs in my life died. (Don't worry, I covered Maggie's ears) His name was Hoover Houdini Chips, usually just known as Chips. Who can say what makes one dog the perfect companion?
The other dog in the running is the dog that my parents owned when I was born. I am an only child and that dog was my constant companion for the next 10 years. I cannot possibly compare Butchy-Boy to Chips and say which was more special. Perhaps I'll write about Butchy some other time. But this is Chips' special day.
I think it has to be more than one aspect of a relationship that makes it so unbelievably perfect. In retrospect, he was a very naughty and difficult dog. He was a one-person pup... and I was the person. He would cry and drive everyone nuts if I tried to leave him anywhere. And he didn't mind very well, either.
Nevertheless, he came at the right time in my life. He had so much heart and enthusiasm for life-- he was ready to go on any adventure at the drop of a backpack. He was a beautiful dog. He was 40 pounds of rock-solid muscle. He was the most intelligent dog I've ever owned- he knew almost 100 words, and could figure things out that I thought were pretty amazing, and I've known a lot of dogs. He hiked more than 1200 miles of the North Country Trail with me. So now I'm crying... and this dog has been gone for 10 years. That's how special he was. He was only six, and he developed a fast acting liver cancer. He was gone almost before I knew what had happened.
For one week I am going to provide a link for people to read the chapter in my book North Country Cache, that tells about Chips' final week. It's more about Chips than hiking, but there was a last hike for him, so it made the book. The chapter is called A Golden Chip of Sunshine Note added 3/24/09- I've now removed the link, but you can read an essay about Chips at The Pup and the Post Office, and one sample chapter of my book at Books Leaving Footprints
Tomorrow, I will post a never before published essay about Chips as a puppy that isn't so sad. On Saturday, I'll be back with fresh and current things to share.
