A Story About Dogs - Part 2



Maggie

 As I was saying ... here we were living in Las Vegas and I had two big Lab/Chow former "pound puppies," Maggie and Nikki. Maggie was turning into a wonderful companion, very well behaved and she loved to play catch and take walks in the neighborhood. Nikki was another matter. She became an escape artist when we went on walks and could slip out of her collar even if I snugged it up tight. I tried a choke collar and she just tried to choke herself. So then I tried a harness and Nik could slip out of that too. One day she slipped free and took off at a dead run across the desert with me hot on her trail. I finally caught up with her about a half mile away where she wriggled under a creosote bush. I had to crawl on my hands and knees under that bush to get her out and I was not a "happy camper" by the time I got my hands on her. 
 

Nikki

I scolded Nikki every step of the way home as she tried to look remorseful. It wasn't until we were safely in the backyard when I realized I'd run across the desert in flip-flops and had stickers in my feet and my arms were badly scratched from the creosote bush. Well, I looked like I'd tangled with a really big cat. Anyway, Nik pretty much learned her lesson after that and when she'd slip out of her harness she'd just stand there and wait for me to put it back on.

Just before Nik's desert escapade I'd started visiting the pound again on my lunch break. One day I saw this beautiful liver-red Shepherd/Chow pup who just sort of followed me home from the pound. When my husband got home from work that evening he immediately asked, "Who's dog is that?" Well, what could I say? "Uh ... our's?"  So he went on a tirade about why we couldn't have a third dog and I promised to find another home for the puppy. Yeah, right! While all this was going on the pup worked her wonders and within twenty minutes he said "That's a great dog. No way are you going to give her away." So 13 week old Shiloh was home.

We continued on as one big happy family, my husband and I and our three dogs. Then I made a fatal decision that I regret to this day. A stray dog showed up in the neighborhood, a pretty but straggly blond-colored Shepherd/Collie mix with yellow eyes and about a year old. We named her Gypsy and for the next couple weeks we tried to find her owners but with no response. Then Gypsy jumped the wall and a neighbor called the pound who came and picked her up. I then had a choice to make, leave Gypsy in the kill-shelter and hope someone adopted her in the next couple weeks before her time was up or adopt her myself.

After much soul-searching I adopted Gypsy and brought her back home. So now I had four dogs. All four dogs seemed to get along great. Gypsy was the smalled dog, at about 35 lbs, Shiloh was a year and a half and 52 lbs, Nik was about 57 lbs and Maggie 67 lbs. A week later, on the morning of my 50th birthday, the dogs were chasing each other up and down the stairs. The next thing I knew Gypsy grabbed Shiloh by the collar, twisted it and shook Shiloh like a dishrag, choking her and snapping her neck. Shiloh was dead on the spot and I got bit pretty badly by Gypsy while trying to get the two dogs separated.

I learned a fatal lesson that day, to be very careful in adding a new dog to an existing family of dogs. I also learned when the pound carted Gypsy off, because it was considered a vicious attack, that she was actually a Wolf/Hybrid and not a Shepherd/Collie like I'd thought. The animal control officer figured Gypsy was most likely a Collie/Wolf mixture. They hadn't figured that out when they had put Gypsy up for adoption or she never would have been adopted out to me.

So a lot of mistakes were made when I thought I was just taking in a very pretty and seemingly gentle homeless dog. Shiloh had been the baby in our household and suffered by my mistake. I've played those few minutes of time over and over again and I can't really say if Gypsy made the attack on purpose or if it was playing that got out of hand. It all happened in the blink of an eye.

Eight years later I'm still wondering how a 35 lb. dog could kill a 52 lb. dog, but it did happen and the other two bigger dogs, Maggie and Nikki, couldn't stop the attack any more than I could. Suffice to say, I learned a big lesson that day and I'm not too crazy about birthdays. This story continues with ""Part 3" and I can assure you some happy times were just around the corner. That was when Shani entered our lives.