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Currently we have 3 dogs. It was 2 for the longest time and is still supposed to be 2, but, well, it’s 3 right now. You’ll understand if you keep reading. I’ll try not to be TOO boring.
We’ve had pets all our lives, my wife and I and we continued the practice after we were married too; we’re both big animal lovers.
Yahoo:
 is a female Heinz 57 variety in the easiest explanation, or something like a shepherd/chow/spaniel mix going by her looks and mannerisms. She’s sleek, runs like a deer and weighs in around 60 pounds. We call her the “truest to nature” dog we’ve ever had and the reason for that will become clear momentarily.
She’s built to run, loves to run, and runs like the wind! I’d guess her top speed bursts to be in the order of 30 to 35 mph. She’s fast and can change direction in midstride in a split second.
Yahoo came to us from our veterinarian as opposed to the SPCA Shelter, which is our preferred source for good pets. But Yahoo was sort of a special case as it turned out. In some areas, and she was in one of them, the dog catcher takes stray dogs to local vets who volunteer their time to help the animals. The animals however must be euthanized after so many days and the option to bring them to the SPCA isn’t open to them. Our vet however felt this dog had the possibility to make a good pet and couldn’t bring himself to put her down without trying to find her a good home. Well, that’s where we came in. She had one more day left in this world when we met her.
We saw the ad the vet had put up, thought she looked nice and since we had lost a faithful dog a few months before that, decided to take a look at her and see how she was. The vet explained that he thought this was really a good dog but that she had been broken by someone and at the moment had little spirit. Boy, he was right about that. I could see in her eyes that she hoped I’d be nice to her but that was as far as it went. I could have kicked her around the cage and she wouldn’t have reacted any differently than she did at my soft voice and gentle touches as I tried to let her know me. She seemed to be totally and completely disinterested in me though. Then as I started to stand up, she and looked up at me again with that hopeful look in her eyes. As we left, she just turned around and settled back down into her bedding.
After we talked it over we decided to try her; being disabled, I was home all day, so as long as however she was broken didn’t result in severe violence, I thought I’d be able to help her. We took her right home with us that same day.
We took her home, introduced her to her new surroundings, and in a few days she began to trust me not to hurt her. Another couple of weeks and she was wagging her tail and acting a lot more like a dog should act. And after that she quickly became a member of the family, albeit a little watchful and very sensitive to disappointing us.
She’s been with us since 2004 and is now a happy, pretty well adjusted dog except in one area, and that’s the reason we call her the “truest to nature” dog we’ve ever had. She’s a runner!
It didn’t take but a couple months to discover she was a runner. We have over a quarter acre fenced in area for our dogs and the fence at that time was in pristine condition. But one afternoon I let her out ahead of me and when I got there, she was gone. We looked and looked and looked for her, without success. After which, she promptly came home, hungry and thirsty, and went right to her water bowl. Long story short, she STILL does it! No fence can hold her. Well, none that I can afford to build, anyway. Once we got used to her disappearing on us and knowing she’d come back we felt better, but this is a rural area and a dangerous place for a dog on the loose.
So eventually, much as I hated to, we bought, installed and trained her for one of those buried wire fences where she would get a shock if she got too close to it. That worked for a couple of summers. Then she started disappearing on us again, coming home when she got hungry and thirsty! Finally one day I caught her getting out and watched from the window as she steeled herself for the shock, stiffened, and went to work on a part of the fence she’d been working on loosening. It gave way, and out she went!
I thought maybe the receiver she wore wasn’t any good so bought another one. But she repeated her act. So I bought a BIG-DOG collar; for big dogs with lots of fur. It took her 4 days to get out!! I so wish it was OK to let a don run loose here, but it’s not not possible. She doesn’t respect the road, looks like a deer from a distance, will befriend almost anyone now, and wouldn’t have much luck against the coy dogs and such around here.
So, she’s a leash-dog now. We take her for long walks, she goes out to the garage with me when I work out there and I put her on a 50’ leash and let her fun around out front. When she goes out the back door for potty and such that leash is a little shorter, but she has to wear it. And you know what? She does NOT mind the leash!! She’s perfectly happy to come up and sit in frnt of me to have it connected to her collar, and never has any problem with it. Go figure! I thought I’d be punishing her by putting her n a tie-out, but nope; she’s perfectly happy with it. Only we can’t forget it, ever, now, because every single time we do, she takes off and comes back in a couple of hours.
She’s aging now and has arthritis, so maybe that’s why she doesn’t mind being leashed up. Sometimes she’ll sit with her head on the back of the sofa and you can see the wanderlust in her eyes, but if you ask her to go out, she’ll run to the door and await her leash.
This bit of strangeness just about has to harken back to her being broken before we got her. Something in her instincts makes her want to run and if the opportunity presents, she will run! But if not, that’s OK too, because somehow, it’s just her way. She’s perfectly happy and plays well, all that, but with the exception of taking an opportunity to run, she can take or leave just about anything else in the running area.
And boy can she run! Like a horse, she actually throws up pieces of sod behind her when she’s running with out other dogs. She can outrun her two “brothers” without hardly thinking about it and loves to beat them to getting all the way around the rock garden. We call her “the goddess” nowadays because she looks so regal and in charge of her surroundings. She even helps us with mothering some real small kittens when we have them for foster care; she cares for them almost as good as their mom would. It’s amazing just how gentle and caring she can be with them. She even tells the other two dogs to quiet down when they start barking by going up to them, barking at them and then gently lifting one of their back legs off the ground so they have so sit or lay down; it’s really funny to watch. And the most surprising part is, they LET her do it!
We’re pretty proud of Yahoo and she’s a great member of our family. She’ll always be part of our hearts eventually, as many of our past pets are, and we’ll always be grateful to her for the things she taught us about dogs.
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MASON:
 This is Mason, second longest time here. At this time, Yahoo was our only dog and if you read her article above, you have an idea just how active she might have been. She was VERY active! Now, actually Mason was a “mistake”, sort of like an unplanned pregnancy. We had just come to the idea that Yahoo would probably like a pet to play with and were planning to visit the SPCA shelter soon to see what we could do about it. I just wasn’t able to provide the activity and exercise that Yahoo really wanted or needed. So we thought another dog might help that a lot, and benefit both dogs at the same time.
Mason is a Keeshond, ( pronounced KAYZ-hond ) purebred and with papers, but really he’s just “our dog” and the papers et al are just something that came with him, along with a tightly curled tail and a yappy personality. Anyway:
Out of the blue one day, we get a phone call from a friend asking us what happened to dogs that were surrendered to the SPCA shelter, because they didn’t think the dog they had was going to be very adoptable. Long story short (again), we took the dog as a foster case in order to see if we thought it might be adoptable or not, and if not, maybe train him to be adoptable.
His current owners were pretty proud of his paperwork and his $700 price tag but didn’t express much in the way of actually appreciating him for his love or affection, so it wasn’t too hard for us to rationalize a way to get them to give up the dog, somehow. They had just brought home a new baby (human type this time) and were convinced the dog was dangerous to the baby. Which, of course, properly trained and conditioned, he would not have been but training wasn’t something they knew anything about, so ... I agreed. Heck, ANY dog unattended around a baby CAN be dangerous. These people just should not have had a dog.
Still trying to keep the story short, something I can seldom do, we ended up fostering him. He was untrained but loyal and fit in rather nicely here. Yahoo took to him right away and they almost immediately began a healthy play relationship in the back yard, so it didn’t take long before we decided he’d be “our” dog rather than surrender him to the SPCA. He learned the basics quickly, taught Yahoo a few bad habits and vice-versa, but it all worked out well. So we had the playmate we’d been considering for Yahoo after all! That was great. Don’t get me wrong: Mason is as dumb as a box of rocks but he’s got plenty of love and silliness to make up for it! He’s fairly excitable, high energy and a full fledged member of the family now.
An anecdotal followup to the friends who had him: They came back two YEARS later and asked for him back! I guess they decided he wasn’t so bad after all. Nope; I wouldn’t do it. I knew darned well all they wanted was the status symbol. So would you believe they went out and bought ANOTHER pure bred? To only give it away again in 6 months because they were afraid of it around the baby? All my talking fell on deaf ears. That dog found a home though and is doing well today. People who only want a dog to show off with shoujld not be allowed to have pets. Friend or not, they aren’t the kinds should have dogs.
Ellie:
Ellie was a Toy Poodle. An older lady, abandoned in the later stages of her life as unfit to breed anymore. She actually chose Jane, my wife, rather than the other way around, at the SPCA Shelter. I always said maybe someday a Chihuahua, but never thought of a Toy Poodle. She had congestive heart failure and was on Lasix, but otherwise healthy and definitely happy. She was a yapper and a half, and a lap dog to boot! Lots of personality though it took awhile to find it! She ruled the roost while she was here and brought love and comfort to all of us, even the cats; everyone loved her and got along with her. Her stay before she moved on off this earth was all too brief but we do have the knowledge that we made her very happy those last days and she did come to love us as quickly as we came to lover her. She was special in about every way a dog that size could have been, and my constant companion. My girl has passed on now, but I still thought she deserved mention here as she filled a hole in our hearts we didn’t even know was there.
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BUDDY:
 Buddy is a short haired Lab Retriever, shown here with his favorite toy in his mount, a tennis ball.
Like an unplanned pregnancy, Buddy came to us unexpectedly. We had two dogs who were happy together and had no plans to take another one. But, fate had conspired to change all that.
First, Buddy was found in an apartment by law enforcement, tending to his owner’s body, who had died two days before. He was hungry and a little scared of strangers, especially when they gathered around his deceased owner, so he had to be removed right away to the SPCA Shelter.
But he had trouble from the instant he was removed from his owner’s apartment. He went almost wild at the Shelter and became totally unmanageable when left alone. They were afraid he would berserk on them over being penned up in a strange place like that with so much noise all around him. He clearly wasn’t a danger to himself or to anyone/anything else but is stress level went completely bonkers as soon as he was without human company. As the hours passed on the first day he just got worse and worse and wouldn’t touch food or water in any way.
The staff at the Shelter knows us well and knew we had considerable past experience with Labradors, so they called us the next day and explained the situation. The only think keeping him going was the food he was given at the apartment before he was brought in; he hadn’t touched anything since and had been most of those 2 days without food and water, too, so dehydration added to his stress on top of everything else. The weekend was coming and they didn’t think he’d live through the weekend.
Well, we knew we shouldn’t, but what else could we do? We went to see Buddy and he instantly took to us, clinging greedily and practically fastening himself to us. We brought him home and gave him a few hours to acclimate and explore every square inch of the house that he had access to. He seemed interested in meeting our other two dogs, and we knew they were sociable, so we introduced them and all went fine. No expressions of glee or playing, but they had no problems with each other. And the cats, well, he just ignored them, as though they didn’t exist.
Figuring we’d better see about getting him to eat and drink we offered him some water. He took it. And then ate some dog food and had some more water, and seemed content as long as we were present. So he ate and drank for the second time in over 4 days, which we figured was a good start at least. From that point on, he ate and drank fairly well and at least we stopped worrying about that. And the vet declared him healthy so that was good too.
For the fist couple of weeks Buddy just “was” and not much more. He laid around, walked around some, and didn’t display much interest in anything. Our dogs would try to play-stance him, but with no success.
I tried several things and couldn’t seem to bring him out of his shell at all. Then I found a tennis ball and tossed it to him, in case he liked to chase things. He didn’t seem to; all he did was walk over to the ball and pick it up in his mouth. Then over the next few days I noticed that he used the tennis ball like you would a pacifier with a baby! He was never without it! He’d put it down long enough to eat or drink, and then pick it right back up again and continue carrying it with him wherever he went.
We increased the attention we were giving him, taking it almost to an unhealthy level for a dog, and finally he began to respond! He started letting me roll the ball across the floor for him, then tossing it and letting him catch it. Finally he started bringing the ball to ME, wanting me to throw it for him! So we went outdoors and signed the final deal because he suddenly loved chasing it as far as I could throw it, and bringing it back. To this day he still loves to chase the ball but it’s no longer a pacified type thing for him. But we do have a good stock of tennis balls around for him because he will not chase ore retrieve anything else! If you toss a rubber ball that only looks like a tennis ball, he’ll run after it, pick it up, and put it right back down! Toss a real tennis ball though and he’s all set! Stick? Don’t even try; he hardly looks at them, let alone retrieve them.
As he started to loosen up and we became better friends, more things kept coming up to surprise us. Like, his ball would accidentally bounce up onto the sofa or a chair; he would not take the ball from there. It took a lot of coaching to convince him it was OK to jump up there and get his ball back! We figured we must have come across the most well trained, most courteous, dog in the world! He never even considered getting up on the sofa or a chair himself!
Finally one day we met and talked with one of his dead owner’s close relatives and she didn’t understand any of the things Buddy was doing; he was a fun loving, sofa-sleeping, counter hopping dog and loved mischief as far as she knew!
So, apparently his past experiences had made quite a mental impact on him. Over time he learned he could go most anywhere to get his ball back, he sleeps on the sofa now, and does most things you would expect of a healthy, well adjusted dog with just one exception.
The one thing he curiously does not and will not, even with coaching, do, is jump up on anyone. Our other two dogs are all over us but Buddy properly keeps all four feet firmly planted on the ground when he greets us. So with that one exception, which we are quite grateful for since he does weight 90 pounds, he’s a normal, healthy, well balanced dog now! It took a little extra time, but he is now firmly entrenched as a full member fo this family now.
He’s become “my” dog now and is my constant companion wherever I go and will let him go too. He insists on following behind me, never gets in front of me or beside me. He’ll drive us both nuts in a narrow passageway trying to get behind me where he thinks he belongs. If I stop and give him special permission he will go through a doorway ahead of me, but then he’ll stop and wait for me to com through the doorway too so he can take up his position behind me. Sometimes it’s like he’s velcro’d himself to my butt. It’s a running joke about if you want to find Buddy, look for my butt!
On the other hand though, this is the first dog I’ve EVER had that I could actually take with me almost anywhere and not have to worry about him running off and getting in trouble. He always has his trusty tennis ball in his mouth just in case I’ll stop and throw a few for him, but outdoors, anywhere, I never had to worry about him. He stays nearby and minds me well. Well, one exception: he would really love to go off walking with the Amish kids when they go by on their way to school. He minds me, but I usually have to yell at him to get his attention and make him come back to me.
We found out that Buddy was never around cats at all, or even other dogs unless he met them when he was being walked. And that part pretty much has remained with him. Cats don’t seem to exist to him, even when they crawl over him or jump at his wagging tail. Yahoo and Mason are pals, and that’s apparently OK with him; he makes no special attempts to play with them and seldom joins them even when he’s invited by clear play-stances. He would just rather be next to me and if I’m not there, he tosses his tennis balls around and plays by himself. One thing we are pretty sure of is that he was never taught to play. We don’t doubt he was loved, but it doesn’t appear that he ever had any chances to play at all. He just doesn’t know how to. He doesn’t even mind it when the other two butt into our play, wanting their own attention from me. I just try to make everyone happy and Buddy makes that pretty easy to do.
Buddy is one dog I seriously wish I could get inside his head. Obviously he’s not the same dog he was before the terrible experience of his owner’s death and ensuing caging at the SPCA. At this point in what I think is a pretty happy and well adjusted life for him, he’s just a different dog; not better, not worse, just different as far as we can tell. I can’t help pondering why he’s different; what happened and what changed in him? If I pondered that for the rest of my life I’d never know, but I DO know that we all love Buddy, he loves, us, just as unconditionally as we do him, and he’s a permanent part of our lives now for as long as he lives. He’s a GREAT dog!
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