My first dog was not my choice. My sisters and I begged our parents to get us a dog. So one Christmas, when I was about 12, Dad brought home a little furry thing hidden in his hands. We thought, great, he got us a rabbit--but we wanted a DOG!. Well, it was a dog. It was a tiny little chihuahua puppy. She was adorable, but not exactly what we kids had in mind. We christened her 'Lady' because we had just seen Lady and the Tramp and apparently we weren't very imaginative kids in the area of dog naming.
Over the years, Lady became very snippy (and rightfully so, what with our two hyperactive young barefoot hillbilly cousins scaring the heck out of her every time they came over to visit) and I was the only person she wouldn't bite if someone needed to pick her up when she needed to be moved off the couch. So she became "my" dog by virtue of the fact that my sisters were terrified of her. I should clarify that I meant to say she wouldn't bite me every time. She could be a little piranha when she wanted to be. The only trick we ever taught Lady was to bark at the doorbell or if someone knocked on the door. We thought it was funny; our parents, not so much.
I showed Lady in a 4-H Club dog show at the state fair one year. She won best in show and received a trophy that towered over her head. Lady lived to be around 14 and died in her sleep one night. The vet said she had a heart attack. She was a beautiful little dog and I would and have considered getting another chihuahua.
Our next dog was inherited, and definitely wasn't the breed choice of any of my immediate family. My cousin had a dalmation. He was a very large dalmation, intact and not very well socialized. My uncle had been transferred from Texas to Michigan with his job and they couldn't take the dog with them, so my grandparents agreed to take him. My grandparents' yard flooded one year after a heavy spring rain and they didn't want the dog in the house, so they asked my dad if Patches could come and live at our house. And so he did. We did not have a fence all the way around our yard, so Patches had to be chained to the tetherball pole (which we girls had long since lost interest in using for its intended purpose anyway).
In retrospect, I feel really bad for Patches and the way he was treated by my family, but at the time, I was a young teenager who didn't know any better and had no power to do anything about it even if did know. I can't even remember what ended up happening to Patches. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I think my dad ended up finding a better home for him with some people who lived out in the country. I'll have to ask him, but if I can't remember at my age, there's a good chance he won't be able to remember either.
Patches was hyper (mostly because of a lack of exercise and discipline) and would dig grave-sized holes in the backyard, which thrilled my father, as you can imagine. From that experience, I was able to cross that breed off my list. They are beautiful dogs, but they're not for me.
By the time Lady passed away, I was already married and out of my parents' house. One of my neighbors had two little apricot toy poodles who had just given birth to two little apricot poodle puppies. She knew how much I liked her dogs, and how much they liked me, so she decided to give me one of the puppies. That wasn't my first experience with poodles, however. When I was a kid, our next door neighbor had two toy poodles, one white and one silver. The white one had tear-stained eyes and bad breath and was a tad neurotic, and the silver one was short and fat. I wasn't crazy about either of them, and until I met the apricot toys my neighbor had, I had no desire to own a poodle.
During the time I had my poodle (his name was Aileron--so named because I was taking flying lessons at the time and it was my favorite aviation-related word), my marriage ended and I was back at my parents' house. I decided that I wanted a doberman. So I bought a little black puppy I named Frankie (no idea why) and constructed a pen for her in the backyard, much to the chagrin of my dad. She managed to escape from the pen one day and got hit by a car. I was devastated, but a few months later when the man I was dating told me that his brother's dobe had had puppies, I decided to get another one. The second one was a red female. She was gorgeous and I was determined that what had happened to Frankie would not happen to Charlie.
One day I was playing with Charlie and Aileron in the backyard, when suddenly Aileron spotted a jogger on the far side of the road in front of our house. Always the little socialite, he bolted to go and greet the man, and was hit by a car as I watched helplessly. He rolled under the car, then ran towards me, collapsing just a foot or so from where I was standing. I picked him up and he died in my arms. The driver didn't even stop.
So after Charlie escaped from the pen once, I decided that I would rather give her up to a better home than to see her lying on the side of the road dead. My heart could not have taken another death to the highway. As it happened, one of the techs at my vet's office had a young dobe that he was wanting to get a companion for. He lived out in the country and had acres and acres of open space. I missed her, but I knew she was safer with him.
A couple of years later, in 1987, I decided to move up north to Boston. I lived in apartments, often with roommates, and couldn't have any pets. When I finally got an apartment all to myself (in 1995), I adopted a cat. He was an orange tabby that I named Murphy. I love my cats, but in my heart, I always really wanted another dog. In late 1999, I moved to New Jersey. By 2003, I had three cats, but still no dog. I was working some crazy hours that involved frequent overnight trips to Philadelphia. Cats are perfect for that kind of lifestyle; dogs are definitely not.
The day after New Year's 2005, my cat Murphy died. I still had two cats, Gizzie and Mickey, and I decided that two is a good number. With three, my two males tended to tag-team my little female and it wasn't a fair fight at all. With two, they just played together and Gizzie could get away if she wasn't in the mood (although to be fair to Mickey, I witnessed several instances in which Gizzie was the antagonist). Then, in July of this year, Gizzie developed a squamous cell tumor on the base of her tongue. It was a very aggressive tumor and the vet told me she probably wouldn't last long. I took her home and fed her liquified food with a syringe. She hated it and I hated putting her through it, but the tumor had displaced her tongue so badly that she couldn't eat properly. It was a Thursday that I had first noticed that she couldn't keep her tongue in her mouth and by Saturday, she couldn't drink water or even eat the cat treats I was hand feeding to her. Mickey had stopped trying to play with her and was actively avoiding her. It seemed as if he knew something was seriously wrong.
I took her back to the vet's office that day and had her put to sleep. It was so incredibly sad, because she was a wonderful cat, but I've never been so sure that I was making the right decision as I was that day.
As I was leaving the vet's office, I saw a couple of older ladies sitting in the waiting room with a cat in a carrier. I noticed that one side of the cat's face was visibly swollen. They had overheard me talking to someone else about Gizzie's tumor and they told me that their cat had one too. We talked for a minute, me with tears streaming down my face and as I went to leave, one of them said, "She'll bring you another one to love". I really took that to heart and found comfort in it.
to be continued...
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