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.)

A Story About Dogs - Part 3




Shani

 I brought Shani home just days after my 50th birthday. I had made the rounds of every animal shelter in the Las Vegas area before I found her. She was listed as a "stray, approx. 5 months old, Shepherd Mix" and at first I wasn't sure if this was the puppy I was supposed to bring home. I called my husband on the phone and asked him what he thought.

Only days before we'd lost our beautiful and sweet Shiloh, a year and a half old Shepherd/Chow mix, when she was killed by Gypsy, a stray dog we'd taken into our household only a few weeks before. So I was leery about adopting another stray. Our other two dogs, Maggie and Nikki, both Lab/Chow mixes, were also mourning the loss of Shiloh.  All of us, my husband included, kept walking around the house expecting Shiloh to pop out of hiding with her tail wagging and a big doggie smile. There was a big empty hole in our household and we needed to do something about it, fast. This 5 month old pup was pretty, but I just wasn't sure about her.  Looking at her through the wires of her pen, she seemed so terribly sad. If I didn't take her home, who would? Since she was in a "kill shelter" I knew she only had days before her time was up.



I'd been looking for a real puppy, one in the 10-12 week range, not a 30 pound, half grown pup who obviously had seen better days. Her fur was long and thick, but she definitely look malnourished. I talked to the woman at the front desk and was told the the pup was found wandering the streets. Considering the temp had been in the 110s for days straight, it was a wonder she hadn't died from heat exhaustion. Well, no wonder she was skinny and depressed.

The puppy had been at the pound the requisite number of days and no one had claimed her. Apparently she was just another case of dog dumping, which was prevalent in the Las Vegas area. People flocked to Vegas year round in hopes of starting a new life and making that "big win."  But according to statistics, most people quickly went through all their money and moved away within three months, often leaving everything behind, including their pets. So this puppy was probably one of those abandoned by someone heading out of town. She'd been found close to the desert, near Boulder Highway, the main route south out of Vegas.

So I described the puppy to my husband and asked, "What do you think? She's not a little puppy, but she is beautiful." He suggested I play with her for a while and see what I think. So I got one of the animal control people to let me take the pup out into the play area. The first thing she did was pee at my feet and then roll over for a belly rub. The animal control girl said, "She might have incontinence problems." I thought not, that the puppy was probably just stressed to the max and was so excited that someone actually wanted to take her out to play that she had to pee. I also figured she was not used to "peeing in her house" and so wasn't peeing in her pen. I thought she definitely must have been a house-dog in her former life.

Within minutes this sweet puppy had won me over and I was ready to take her home. Only when we walked up to the front desk I was told the pup still had to be spayed. So I could pay for her and then pick her up the next day after the procedure. I went home very concerned about the puppy surviving the surgery. By the time my husband got home from work that evening he'd already, sight unseen, named the puppy Shenandoah. I agreed and said her nickname would be Shani.

The next afternoon I went back to the pound to pick up Shani. She was so excited to see me that she promptly peed at my feet again. I had  a momentary second thought about "what if she's incontinent?" Then I decided to take my chances and Shani and I walked out the door. (Read more in Part 4.)



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.

A Story About Dogs - Part 1



Me with my first dog, Dusty

I love dogs. It seems like I've always had one or more as a companion since I was a baby. The first were Dusty and Rusty, red Cocker Spaniel puppies that my parents got for me when I was a year old. The two apparently didn't get along, or so I've been told, and Dusty was given away to a cousin, and Rusty was renamed Dusty. Not sure why they decided to change his name. My favorite Dusty story is when he and my 3 year old brother ran away together. They were waylayed a couple miles away by a sweet little old white haired lady. I can still picture the two of them sitting in the lady's yard when my mom and I went to pick them up. Anyway, Dusty stayed by my side, or my brother's side, for 12 whole years until he died of cancer.



Mr. Binks

 

It was a difficult decision in picking out a new dog. Tear-stained we finally made a trip to the pound and brought home Mr. Binks. Yep, he came with that name, but he was commonly known as Binky or Binks. That's him in the Slideshow photo standing on the rocks on Laguna Beach. Binky was an interesting mix, supposedly from a Cocker mom and an Old English Sheepdog, Hollywood movie star dog. Binky could pull us at breakneck speed up and down the sidewalk on our skateboards. He loved taking me for a walk, only the leash got clipped onto my jeans belt loop and Binky carried the leash in his mouth. Binky loved sunglasses, bright colored bandannas and T-shirts. He loved to swim in the pool or at the beach. I have mourned his loss for all these many years.

Lady and her two pups were dogs passing through. Lady was one year old stray Collie mix, pregnant by a neighbor's giant German Shepherd mix. Not long after she took up residence with us she had two puppies, born 8 hours apart as my Mother tells the story. Well, Mom named the pups Pansy and Yogi, only when they found new homes their names changed to Sheba and Max. Go figure. I rather liked the original names. Lady found a nice home with a woman who had a lot of dogs. I was in college at that time and moving on with my life and no room for dogs.

After Bob (name changed to protect the guilty, he wants me to say his name is Bob) and I got married we moved from California to Reno to Florida. That's where I found my adorable Dixie Darling, a Blue Merle Australian Shepherd pup who got so excited she tumbled to my feet when I first saw her. Dixie was known for her love of kids and her ability to round them all up in a circle. She was great at "kid control." Her unfortunate trait was that she was an escape artist. There was no fence she couldn't scale, so she'd take neighborhood walks on her own, visiting all her favorite people who gave her daily treats, plus she'd venture on down to the bay for a swim or to hunt for snakes. She could catch a water moccasin by the tail and whip it to death in a flash. Now those are mean and dangerous snakes to have around, so she kept the yard clear of them.

Dixie had a litter of pups before we had her spayed. Three found new homes, Rocky, Rebel and Blackie, but Jambalaya (aka Butchie) lived out his days with Dixie. One day Butchie disappeared and never came back. He was either stolen or hit by a car. Since he was a gorgeous big Blue Merle with one blue eye and one brown eye, I like to think someone took him home. Dixie ended her days when she got in the way of a car. Memories of Dixie just make me smile.

I eventually got another puppy, Rebel, a beautiful Border Collie whose claim to fame was jumping off our neighbor's fishing pier and swimming in the bayou. Rebel had a keen dislike of squirrels who would bomb him with hazel nuts from the trees overhead. So Rebel would bark his fool head off over those squirrels whenever we were away from home. This meant the neighbors complained and since a new "No Barking Ordinance" had just gone into effect, we had to find a new home for Rebel or face a $10/day fine. We didn't make that kind of money, so eight month old Rebel found a new home with a little old lady who was retired and wanted a dog to sleep on the end of her bed and to help her with her gardening.  



Maggie

 

Many many years passed before I ever considered bringing home another dog. By then we'd moved to Las Vegas and spent most of our time working and little time for anything else. But I started visiting the local pound on my lunch breaks and eventually brought home Maggie. She was a 10 week old Lab/Chow mix, full of energy and wanted to play catch for hours on end. So Maggie and I played catch on my lunch breaks and after I got home from work. She didn't care what I threw, a ball or stuffed toy or stick, she'd retrieve anything. At four months old Maggie stopped an early morning break-in, when a guy came over the wall with the intention of breaking and entering. Maggie backed the guy up to the wall and held him at bay until the police arrived. After the guy was arrested, it turned out he was an unregistered felon with a long record, the cops told us that Maggie was a dog to keep and were amazed at her guard-dog traits at such a young age.


Not ten months passed before I got it into my head that Maggie was lonely while we were at work. Hey, that sounded like a good story to me. So I took to visiting the pound again on my lunch breaks and brought home Nikki, a 7 month old Lab/Chow mix who looked very much like Maggie. Nikki was at the pound for the 2nd time, supposedly because her last owners had a cat and a new baby and decided to give up their puppy as they didn't have enough time for her. Nikki was very depressed when she came to live with us, but she took to Maggie right away. So in no time Maggie replaced the Cat Mother that Nikki had lost. To this day Nikki still has a fondness for babies and cats. In fact, we think that Nikki thinks she's a cat instead of a dog. Nik is very vocal and "talks" to us about everything. Her bark is an "uh-ruff" and she winds herself around your legs and furniture just like a cat.



Nikki

 My husband (Bob?) took the addition of Nikki to our household with mixed feelings. For the first year Nik tore out our drip water system in the backyard. My husband would painstakingly replace the drip lines and the next evening Nik would greet us at the door with 10 ft. of drip hose hanging from her mouth and her tail wagging so hard it shook her whole body. How can you scold a dog who looked that cute? Eventually Nikki learned better manners, but not until I had a long long talk with her and promised to return her to the pound if she tore up the drip lines one more time. Now Nikki is a very smart dog and she never tore up anything again after that. I guess Nik and I should have had that talk long before? (Read more at "A Story About Dogs - Part 2.")