Reposting last year's National Dog Day post:
The Older Sister:
When I was born, my parents already had a dog. Her name was Menze (pronounced Men-zee). She was (supposed to be) a Lhasa Apso, but my mom always liked to say that Menze's biological mother had been a woman of questionable character. We think she was actually a Lhasa-poo, before hyphenated dog breeds were cool. She was grey and had 3 different textures of hair - curly like a poodle on top of her head, wavy on her back, and fine and silky on her tail. She was a mullet dog.
Menze was as fiercely protective as a 13 pound grey fluffball can be. UPS guy at the door? He better step off! Squirrel on the lawn? He's up to some sh*t! Leaf blows across the lawn? Hey, you deciduous delinquent, you better just keep moving!
But she was also a sweetheart. My dad would put her up on his lap and play the piano and they would "sing" together. I remember her best as she was when she was an older dog.
She lived to be almost 17 - 7 days short of her 17th birthday, as I recall. She died on MLK day when I was almost 13. She had been going downhill since our cat, who she had thought was her mother, died 6 months earlier at the age of 22. She died quietly, in her place of honor at the end of my parents' bed, early in the morning. I did not see it, but I was told later that my dad cried. This is the first time I ever knew of that he cried. She was just as much his baby as my sister and I were.
4 1/2 years ago, my boyfriend and I decided we wanted to get a dog. I had been without a dog since Murphy died, and Jason had been without one since his childhood dog, Skeeter, had died when he was 18. Neither of us had ever raised a puppy, so we decided to look for an adult dog at a shelter.
We did research online ahead of time, narrowing it down to a few promising-looking dogs. One of them we thought we probably wouldn't look at, unless we were disappointed with the others. He was 38 pounds - bigger than we wanted. He was a German Shepherd/Corgi mix. Nothing against Shepherds - we just didn't know that a dog that big would work out for us. But we got to the shelter and looked at the first dog on our list - too hyper, and she didn't pay any attention to us. As we were wandering around looking for the second dog on our list, we passed the one we weren't sure about.
Sitting quietly, watching us as if he has been expecting us, was the only dog in the very large room not barking. This was the dog we were unsure about? But he was so calm and sweet! We petted him through the fencing (even though we weren't supposed to). He wasn't really all that big, and he had such a giant, goofy grin. We stood up to go find someone to unlock the cage so we could interact with him some more - and he stood up on his hind legs and reached out to touch the cage door, with a hearbreaking look on his face that said, "no, don't go!"
We took him to the "get to know you" room, but we had already decided this one was a keeper. They were calling him Cashew, but we named him Baldur, for the Norse god of the sun and general goodness. It suits him - he is dark gold, and he trots around with a regal gait one could only expect of a son of Odin.
We took him home, where the first thing he did once we were inside was to tackle me and lick my ears.
My boy turned 6 last week, and he is still the love of my life. Actually, everyone loves him. Everyone in our neighborhood knows Baldur, and he has more friends (both human and canine) up and down our street than I do.
He is pushy when he wants to be petted, stubborn about eating and peeing in a timely manner, and likes to body slam dogs who are bigger than him. Since he is coffee-table height, this is about 2/3 of dogs he meets. But he is also a sweetheart.
He is very aware of his size when playing with smaller dogs or my parents' tiny new cat. He is gentle with kids. He knows when I'm upset or sick and curls up with me. One of the best days of my life was when this boy picked me out and said in his sweet, sad-Corgi-face way, "I want you to be my Mommy." Here's to many more years with my boy.
Please leave a comment about the dogs in your life!
I remember that being an absurdly cold January. I'm pretty sure the week Menze died was the week that it was so cold that we had an inch of solid ice on the pool cover. But regardless of whether I'm remembering the extreme cold precisely, it was cold enough that the Georgia clay in our back yard was frozen solid when Menze died. She lay in state in a box in the garage, with a little blankie and a chew toy tucked in with her, until it warmed up a little bit and my dad could dig a grave for her in the back yard.
(Below: My blonde baby sisters)
The Baby Sister:
We were petless for a while after Menze died. We just had to be in mourning for a while. We missed our fuzzies, but we weren't ready to jump into another one for a while. But around the time we decided that we were ready for another dog, fate literally dropped one in our laps.
Toward the end of my freshman year in high school, my mom, who was a preschool director, had a mother walk into her office and ask "Do you want my dog?" After my mom realized that Ashton Kutcher was not going to jump out and proclaim, "you got punk'd!" she asked, "Don't you?" After being told that "she doesn't fit our lifestyle anymore," my mom accepted with the condition that my family would have to meet her and make sure we liked her. She shouldn't have worried - my dad was rolling around on the floor of a stranger's house playing with this little dog 30 seconds after he got in the door.
Murphy was a Maltese - a little white fuzzball who was 11 pounds at her heaviest. She was the sweetest little dog in the whole world. My mom would bring her when she came to pick me up at drama club. Murphy would sit on her lap in the dark in the last row of the theater and watch us walk back and forth on stage, perfectly attentive and quiet. Afterward everyone would gather around to ooh and aah and get kisses. You could scoop her up on your forearm and carry her anywhere. How this dog wouldn't fit anyone's lifestyle is beyond me.
Murphy was clever, too. Jumping off the couch was a long way for a little dog with legs as tiny as hers. She would push the end cushion off the couch and jump down onto that. She always knew what time it was. When she got older, she developed high blood pressure and had to have a pill at 10:00 every night. If we didn't start heading back to bed within 15 minutes of her bedtime meds, she would come to the foot of the stairs and let out one impatient bark to remind us that it was, in fact, bedtime.
Murphy started losing the hair on her back as she got older. The pink freckly skin under the sparse hair made her look like a teacup piglet.
When she was 16, Murphy suddenly got sick. She was chasing me around the coffee table on Wednesday. On Thursday, she was lethargic enough that my mom, worried about her, took her to the vet. She came back with a probable cancer diagnosis. Friday night she had a stroke. Early Saturday morning she started having violent, full-body seizures and as soon as the vet opened we took her in to ease her suffering.
I have never cried so hard in my life - afterward my face hurt with a pain worse than the worst sinus infection I've ever had. Our cat, Miso, who had acted exactly as you would expect a little brother to act toward Murphy all their lives, spent the next several days pawing cabinets open to look for her.
Some of you will think what follows is a bunch of hooey. Some time before Murphy died, I had a dream where I was in heaven. It was the most stereotypical heaven you can picture - all clouds and people in white robes. A little girl with wavy white-blonde hair and dark brown eyes came running up to me. I knew without having to ask or her having to speak that it was Murphy. She was so excited and she said to me, "Elizabeth, I got promoted! We're going to be sisters again!" I don't know if you believe in reincarnation, but I personally like the idea of it. I hope to meet Murphy again some day.
My Baby:
Baldur - my baby, my buddy, my insufferable butthead.
4 1/2 years ago, my boyfriend and I decided we wanted to get a dog. I had been without a dog since Murphy died, and Jason had been without one since his childhood dog, Skeeter, had died when he was 18. Neither of us had ever raised a puppy, so we decided to look for an adult dog at a shelter.
We did research online ahead of time, narrowing it down to a few promising-looking dogs. One of them we thought we probably wouldn't look at, unless we were disappointed with the others. He was 38 pounds - bigger than we wanted. He was a German Shepherd/Corgi mix. Nothing against Shepherds - we just didn't know that a dog that big would work out for us. But we got to the shelter and looked at the first dog on our list - too hyper, and she didn't pay any attention to us. As we were wandering around looking for the second dog on our list, we passed the one we weren't sure about.
Sitting quietly, watching us as if he has been expecting us, was the only dog in the very large room not barking. This was the dog we were unsure about? But he was so calm and sweet! We petted him through the fencing (even though we weren't supposed to). He wasn't really all that big, and he had such a giant, goofy grin. We stood up to go find someone to unlock the cage so we could interact with him some more - and he stood up on his hind legs and reached out to touch the cage door, with a hearbreaking look on his face that said, "no, don't go!"
We took him to the "get to know you" room, but we had already decided this one was a keeper. They were calling him Cashew, but we named him Baldur, for the Norse god of the sun and general goodness. It suits him - he is dark gold, and he trots around with a regal gait one could only expect of a son of Odin.
We took him home, where the first thing he did once we were inside was to tackle me and lick my ears.
My boy turned 6 last week, and he is still the love of my life. Actually, everyone loves him. Everyone in our neighborhood knows Baldur, and he has more friends (both human and canine) up and down our street than I do.
He is pushy when he wants to be petted, stubborn about eating and peeing in a timely manner, and likes to body slam dogs who are bigger than him. Since he is coffee-table height, this is about 2/3 of dogs he meets. But he is also a sweetheart.
He is very aware of his size when playing with smaller dogs or my parents' tiny new cat. He is gentle with kids. He knows when I'm upset or sick and curls up with me. One of the best days of my life was when this boy picked me out and said in his sweet, sad-Corgi-face way, "I want you to be my Mommy." Here's to many more years with my boy.
Please leave a comment about the dogs in your life!