A Story About Dogs - Part 4



Shani

Shani was a 30 pound, 5 month old "pound puppy" the day I brought her home. Our other two dogs, Maggie and Nikki, adopted her immediately. Maggie became her new Mama Dog and spent hours every day training Shani in everything a good dog needed to know. Nikki took on the role of buddy and rarely left Shani's side.

 
Shani entered the household as a big happy puppy. She played non-stop and would run circles around our pool. She and the other dogs would go swimming, but only if I went in with them. On the other hand, on scorching hot Vegas summer days, all three dogs would wade on the pool steps.

Not long after we got Shani, we put our tract house up for sale. It sold pretty fast in the then booming Vegas market, and  we moved to a hillside house at the edge of the desert. It was a custom house in an all-custom neighborhood with a view of the Las Vegas lights. Our dogs adapted immediately and quickly claimed the pool and attached hot-tub as theirs. The back of our lot sloped up in a berm, which enabled the dogs to look over the walls into the neighbor's yards on either side. Thank goodness both neighbors were dog people and didn't mind being watched by our dogs.

 

Shani learned right away how to jump up and grab the top of the wall and could hoist herself up the rest of the way so she'd be hanging over the top. The neighbors behind our house in the tract neighborhood had not liked Shani doing this, which is one reason why we'd decided to move. But in our new neighborhood, these neighbors didn't mind a bit.

 
One day, when my husband and I were sitting on the patio, Nikki decided to climb the wall, something we didn't know she could do. Before we could stop her, Nik went over the wall into the neighbor's backyard. I had an instant moment of heart failure, because that neighbor, who had a big red Vizsla, happened to be dog-sitting that day, and he also had a big Samoyed and an even bigger Rottweiler in his backyard. Nik was about half the size of those three dogs, so I didn't expect her to survive if those dogs turned on her, not to mention the long drop she had to make into the neighbor's yard.

 

I contemplated climbing over the wall myself and then decided against that tactic. As much as I loved Nik, I didn't want to be dog food. So I ran around to the neighbor's front door and explained the situation. We went together into his backyard only to find Nik with the other three dogs and all had their tails wagging. Whew! That was a close call. After that, we mounted some planter boxes on the top of the wall, right where Nik had gone over, and she never did that again. Shani continued to hang on the wall and to look over, but she never did jump down into the neighbor's yard. Maggie, being the tallest of our three dogs, could stand on her tip-toes and look over the wall. Maggie never  had the urge to climb a wall. Thank goodness!

We lived in that cream-colored stucco, Spanish style house with the tiled roof, for the next couple years. By that time we found out that our daughter was pregnant with our first grandchild. That's when I decided it was time to move back to the south, because I wanted to be within at least driving distance of the grandbaby. In short order I had my husband convinced it was time for him to retire, which he could do since he'd recently turned 60.

I was all for moving back to Florida, to the little old bayou house we'd turned into a rental property when we moved away from Florida 11 years before. But we had long-term tenants in the house and we didn't look forward to having to renovate the inside of the house when they did move out. However, for some reason, we decided that we wanted to retire on an island, so we moved to Saint Simons Island on the Georgia coast. That would put us a day's drive away from our soon-to-be-born grandbaby. At least an improvement over having to fly from Las Vegas to Florida.



Now moving across country with three good-sized dogs is quite an experience. In all the years we'd lived in Vegas, we'd never traveled with the dogs. I had a girlfriend who would "dog and house sit" whenever we went away on vacation, so our dogs had never had the opportunity to travel. We started out with some day trips to Red Rock Canyon and the Valley of Fire National Park. Maggie took to the traveling right away and would ride standing up, "surfing," in the back of the Jeep Cherokee. Shani would pant non-stop, while Nik would just fall asleep. Anyway, our day trips were a success, so we decided the dogs were ready for the big move.


We'd already purchased our house on St. Simons Island, so all we had to do was get the U-Haul loaded up, with help, and head out across the 2,000+ miles. My husband drove the U-Haul and pulled the Camero behind on a trailer, while I drove the Cherokee with the back seat folded down and padded with comforters for the three dogs. We took the Interstate-20 route and stopped somewhere in Arizona that first night. The dogs had their first night in a motel, a Best Western if I remember correctly, and they acted like three little kids jumping from bed to bed.

Me with Shani, Maggie and Nikki

It took us four days to drive across country and much of those miles were a blur. We made numerous pit-stops for the dogs and to stretch our legs. I do remember that we never had a problem finding a motel that would let us stay with three dogs. They were well behaved, rarely barked, and never left a mess in or out of the motels. So for anyone contemplating a cross-country move with their dogs, big or small, it's not all that hard. The only hard part is all those monotonous miles of driving. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of beautiful scenery too, but after a while it all gets mixed together. The dogs, on the other hand, thought they were on a grand adventure.

 We arrived on Saint Simons Island exhausted and relieved that the move had gone so well. The U-Haul office sent two guys over to help us unload the 24 ft. moving van. It's a good thing we had help, at the cost of $100 for the two helpers, as I'd had back surgery the year before and couldn't lift much of anything. Thinking back on it, I'm amazed I'd even been able to make that long drive. But I guess you just do what you have to do when you have to do it. Besides, I had a great motivator, a new grandbaby on the way.



Maggie, Nikki and Shani were elated with our new house, a two story beach cottage style, with covered front porches upstairs and down. They particularly liked that the French door from the master bedroom opened onto the upstairs covered porch, which became their favorite place to hang out. Their other favorite place was the dog beach where they could run off-leash, play in the surf and chase seagulls. (Read more in Part 5.)