OUR BELOVED PETS — FUR & FEATHERS WRITING COMPETITION
Three Dogs and Two Generations
So many dogs over the years
Our first childhood dog was Sparky. Somehow we decided on a purebred Welsh Terrier. I remember driving to a farm area to pick him up. Sparky was the runt of the litter. He was adorable, black and brown, a miniature version of an Airedale.
Sparky’s doggie IQ was off the charts. My mom taught him to do tricks; roll over, play dead, say please, sit up, and shake hands. At the mention of ice cream, he ran to the freezer and wagged his tail so fast, he always got an ice cream treat. He learned after a while to do all the tricks in fast-forward motion to get a treat faster.
If you said, “Sparky, Go get your leash,” he would run to the pantry and drag his leash off the nail in the pantry. He was always more than ready to go for a walk.
But Sparky had a couple of character flaws. He liked to escape to freedom, and he also began to bite people.
When taking him for a walk, strangers would exclaim, “He is so cute!” Does he bite?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.”
A trusting hand would reach down to pet him.
Snarl, snarl.
Luckily the strangers had quick reflexes, and we finally learned to say,
“Do NOT pet Sparky!”
His desire for freedom was a problem. We could barely open the front door an inch because he was an escape artist. He would bound across the street through the neighbor’s yard. My ten-year-old tears would flow. He would come jaunting home in an hour or two. Sometimes my mom would get in the car, and we would drive through the neighborhood calling him. If we were lucky, that technique worked!
He also learned to jump a four-foot fence. He looked like a four-legged Olympic jumper.
One day my mom dropped a candy bar in the trash, and Sparky and my mom went for it at the same time. Sparky won and bit my mom.
“That’s IT.” my mom announced.
She and my dad got in the car and that was the end of Sparky.
My twelve-year-old tears flowed. I was old enough to understand that he went to the dog pound. My parents came home and tried to console me by saying that there might be a farmer willing to adopt him.
To this day, I have a vision of Sparky in his Happy Hunting Grounds, which looks just like the neighbor’s yard across the street when he came happily running home after a day’s excursion.
A year later we were ready for another family dog. This time the agreement was I had to train the dog. We went to the Humane Society. There was a six-month-old tawny-colored dog with big feet and long hair. There was a sign on the cage:
REASON GIVEN UP: TOO ROUGH WITH CHILDREN.
The dog looked timid and not at all like a dog who would be rough with kids. The mix was half Collie and half Golden Retriever. We were told she would grow into a larger dog, but we took our chances. We named her “Tawana.”
We signed up for obedience training at the YMCA. There were three trainers and about twenty owners with dogs.
The trainers called roll.
George and Fido
John and George
Susan and Spot
Sally and Tawana.
Our dogs learned to sit at attention on our left during roll call.
We learned new skills each week. We practiced at home. The dogs learned to heel, come on command, stay, and lie down. When we had trouble getting the dogs to learn, the trainers helped us. When the trainers worked with Tawana, they came to me and said, “You have a wonderful dog! She is so responsive, and such a joy to work with.”
I beamed with pride!
There was another owner who was not so lucky. A male German Shepherd would not obey the trainer and tried to bite him. The trainer told the owner in front of the class, “This is not a trainable dog. Our recommendation is that you find another dog.”
Memories of Sparky came back. I also wonder if a dog trainer would flatly dismiss a dog in today’s world! A quick Google search reveals Gentle Dog training is available.
Tawana, an elegant dog, did not learn to do tricks, but she could heel and walk next to me without a leash. She never bolted out the front door. She never bit anyone.
The only time she ran away was when we were out of town on vacation, and we left her with a friend who lived a mile away. The friend told us she ran away the first day, and they were frantic.
They found her on the front porch of our home, even though she had ridden in a car to the dogsitter’s house, and had never been anywhere near there before.
Over time, I did not enforce the training as consistently, but she still looked at me with big brown eyes that clearly communicated, “I’m always willing to do a half-assed job of everything you taught me.”
My mother took Tawana jogging daily after I went away to college. One day a stranger told my mom, “I think that dog is a bit tired, maybe she needs a break from running.”
My parents divorced when I was 23. My dad still came to the house and one time my mom reported he burst into tears over seeing Tawana.
Tawana lived to be seventeen in people years. That’s 119 in dog years.
Fast forward to when I was a young mother raising children. Our neighbor didn’t want their dog, so we inherited Kirby. Kirby was a medium-sized mutt dog, brown and short-haired.
Working full time I did not have time to train Kirby. Kirby’s bark was worse than his bite. Like Sparky, he was a runner, though. He loved bolting out the front door when I was on the way to work with my six and eight-year-old kids.
Of course, my kids would cry frantically, and sometimes we were able to coax Kirby into the car and get him home. Other times, he thumbed his doggy nose at us and played “Can’t catch me!”
That left me to tell the kids, we HAVE to go to school, he will be here when we get home. We lived near a busy highway, but Kirby was always at the front door smiling happily and panting when we returned from school.
One time, though, he came home and threw up foul-smelling vomit all over the garage. We rushed him to the vet, and they didn’t have a clue what he got into, but he survived. It is not only cats that have nine lives.
After my kids had been away at college for two years, my marriage fell apart.
By this time Kirby had a skin condition, cataracts, and terrible arthritis. He could barely sit down.
We took Kirby to the vet. We had him put down and saved the ashes in a fancy wooden box.
The dog and the marriage died at the same time.
Dogs are wonderful companions with distinct personalities. Each of these dogs has a special place in my heart.
Here is a story of rescue cats that I loved.
There are many wonderful stories about pets. If you have one to share, it is not too late to enter this contest organized by the amazing Debra Groves Harman.