Dogs Are Family Too

The very first dog that was ever my own was my dog Mikki. My dad had brought her home from work. A woman he worked with had brought her dog's puppies to the office in hopes of finding them new homes. I'm not sure if she had the miniature poodle or the Scottish terrier, but that's what Mikki was a combination of. I called her my "pooter".

Mikki

She was supposed to be the family dog, but it didn't take long before she was all mine. I did most of the chores associated with keeping a dog; feeding, bathing, cleaning up after. In return she loved me unconditionally. She took to sleeping in my bed with me at night when I could sneak her in. Otherwise she would scratch on my door in the morning to wake me up and greet me with whiskery wet kisses.

I was almost 20 when I started dating my husband-to-be. He would pick Mikki and me up and we would go to his apartment. I don't know how the game started but it seemed funny at the time.

The apartment building was on a small curved road. When we reached the beginning of the curve we would stop, let Mikki out and race off. She would race behind us to the first floor apartment. It got to be where she would know what was coming and get all excited and squirmy in anticipation of the race.

One day we were heading to the apartment and approached the curve. The window was rolled down and before I fully realized what happened, Mikki had leapt out. Without thinking I yelled, "Go! Go!" My shrieks of laughter suddenly turned to wails of sorrow when there was that sickening sound of thudding underneath the car. We had run over her. She had been in the road ahead of the car where we didn't see her instead of on the grassy side of the road as she usually was. I looked back to see her limping to the gutter where she collapsed. Before the car was fully stopped I jumped out and ran back to scoop her up in my arms, but it was too late.

We buried her out in the foothills. I cried every day for a week. Sometimes I thought I heard her scratching at my door, but I knew it was my imagination. It was all so stupid and unnecessary. I know my fiance felt guilty, but I placed the blame on myself.

Time does have a way of making things somewhat better but I still get tears in my eyes when I think of her.

When we married, my husband and I knew we would eventually get at least one dog. He had been raised with miscellaneous dogs his whole life, while in my family it was not practical for various reasons, not for lack of us kids trying to convince our parents otherwise.

Shortly after we married we moved from the apartment to a duplex with a surprisingly large yard. The landlord allowed pets, providing a hefty deposit was paid.

Since my husband is the outdoorsy type and enjoys fishing, hunting, and various other manly pursuits, we thought our first dog should be of a sporting breed. He favored the black labs, but I've always had a thing for having the unusual, so I thought a Visla would be a good choice.

I found a California breeder in the back of a dog magazine and gave her a call. I was disappointed when she said she didn't have any puppies available at that time and it wouldn't be until almost a year later before she was expecting another litter.

That just wouldn't do. When I get my mind set on something it has to be right now. We'd just have to look in the local paper and see what was available. I found a listing of German Shorthaired Pointer puppies. They were less than $200. Now that most certainly would do. Plus I liked the idea of the German part, since my heritage is German/Italian.

How can anyone possibly choose just one of the adorable puppies? They are all so cute. My husband is a "boy dog" guy so that narrowed the choices just a bit. We finally made a pick and brought our new puppy home.

Now, what to name him? After rejecting multiple possibilities we ended up going to our back up method of choosing a name. The good old phone book. My husband closed his eyes while I fanned the book in front of him. He let his finger fall on a page and we looked to where it was pointed. "Otis" somebody or the other. Well then, Otis it was.

Otis and in-law's dog Amos

We'd only been in our duplex for a short while when the in-laws came for a visit. As usual, my m.i.l. brought tons of food with her to fill our fridge. We fixed a tray of delicious sliced salami on the coffee table for snacks after the grand tour of the new digs. We spent a few minutes marveling in the large back yard and then went in to have our wine and goodies.

The plate that held the two pounds of salami was empty. Otis looked a little too satisfied. I sniffed at his mouth and he most definately had salami breath. Fortunately he suffered no ill effects and we learned to not leave food where he could reach it unless we were in the same room to watch him. There is a saying that if you can survive your first two years with a German Shorthair then you'll have him to the end.

Otis, about three months old

When Otis turned one I saw an ad for obedience class and thought it most certainly couldn't hurt, so I signed us up. The class brought out the competetive nature in me and I started going to shows to try and earn Otis's obedience degrees. I also thought I might try out some of the conformation classes to see how he stacked up against the other dogs of his breed. I personally thought he was perfect.

I found out he wasn't. The first time I went to a conformation class more than one person asked what happened to his tail. The German Shorthair tail is supposed to be docked, leaving about 40% of the length. Oops. Somebody had docked Otis's tail to three inches. If I'd have known that I could have saved myself some embarrassment. It wasn't a major fault but it didn't help any. Live and learn.

Grown up Otis

I only went to a few more shows but we finally, by the skin of our teeth, managed to earn his Companion Dog title. Dog shows were just not Otis's favorite thing.

Then came the day we moved into our first very own house. We could punch holes in the wall if we wanted to, paint the walls wacky colors, or do whatever we wanted. We didn't have to worry about the landlord. We lost our pet deposit from the duplex because Otis had shredded the curtains in the room we kept him in when we went to work. Fortunately the room was void of any furniture.

Now we had our own little house, again with a surprisingly big yard. That meant only one thing; it was time to get another dog. We had seen a John Wayne movie (can't recall which) that had a Rottweiler in it. I knew what they were but had never seen one in real life. At that time they were not very well known. We decided to get one.

I found a breeder in Los Angeles and this time we got lucky. She had a litter and we could pick from about five available males.

We thought picking out the Shorthair was hard. These puppies all looked exactly the same. They all seemed to have pretty much the same personalities, playing with each other and occasionally coming over to check us out. After watching the puppies for about thirty minutes we finally made our choice. It was the only one we could pick out from the bunch and know it was the same one each time. He had a tiny piece of turd stuck to the fur on his little stumpy tail.

Roscoe

We brought him home and he was the cutest thing. He looked like a fuzzy little bear cub. Otis wasn't too thrilled with his new brother at first, but eventually they became good friends.

Now for the hard part. A good name. Again we hit the same roadblocks. Nothing seemed to feel right and we couldn't agree. So we did the phone book routine again. Out of three possibles one had the same first name as the first person my husband ever arrested in his police career; "Roscoe". And so the puppy became Roscoe the Rottweiler.

Roscoe was a great dog. He always tried to please me and when he knew he did well not just his stumpy tail, but his whole rear end would wag. I took him to obedience class where he excelled. He earned his C.D. in his first three shows and his CDX (Companion Dog Excellent) in the next three shows. He wasn't doing too badly in the conformation classes either. I felt optimistic about earning his championship because we were being consistently placed in the top four of our classes. Popularity of the Rottweilers just exploded about then and the classes were huge, sometimes including 20 dogs in one class.

Grown up Roscoe

I was taking him to Utility Dog class by then and he was doing very well. I had ideas of going for his Obedience Champion title. He was two years old and it was time to get his hips x-rayed for his OFA rating. After doing the x-rays, the vet told me it would be a waste of money to send them in to get evaluated because his hips were really bad. Even though he wasn't currently displaying any symptoms, the vet said instead of having "ball and socket" joints, Roscoe had cubes where the ball part should be. He recommended retiring Roscoe from all showing, especially obedience where jumping was a requirement.

I reluctantly took his advice and we retired from all showing.

Another couple of years later and we were finally making enough to buy a house with a little more property. We used to drive around neighborhoods looking for "for sale" signs. The first time I saw the house we eventually bought I knew it would be out of our league. It was just too nice of a neighborhood. When we finally committed to enlisting the aid of a real estate agent she took us to see that house. It had everything we liked, and particularly for me the almost one acre lot. I still didn't think we could afford it but the agent assured us it was within our reach. Apparently it had sat vacant for over a year because the former owner had been transferred by his company. Twice it had started escrow but fallen through for various reasons. It was a sign. We made an offer and the house became ours.

We eventually had our first child. We brought her home and introduced her to the dogs. Again, Otis was a bit stand-offish, but Roscoe seemed happy to see her. He would often lay down by her playpen while she slept or played.

The difference in the two dogs was like night and day. Once when Carli started climbing on Otis his growled and snapped at her. I immediately pounded on him. He got the message that that behaviour was not allowed! After that when she started heading his way he would get up and move to another location. Roscoe, on the other hand, endured all kinds of abuse at the hands of the baby. She could crawl all over him, pull his ears, poke him in the eye, and he would take it all in stride.

Two years later we had another child, this time a boy. The dogs were like old pros now with the kids. By the time the kids were a little older they all played happily together.

My favorite picture of the kids and dogs

Roscoe's bad hips finally caught up with him, but not until he was twelve years old. Even though I had seen the x-rays myself, I wondered if we could have kept on showing. After all, he ran and jumped and played with Otis and the kids.

It was wierd having just one dog. Although we were all grieving I knew we would eventually get another dog. I couldn't bear the thought of getting another Rottweiler though. By then their popularity was ruining the breed through over breeding and I knew we could never get another one like Roscoe.

to be continued...