Otis's health was rapidly going down hill. We often had to give him a hand to stand up. I wasn't sure how much longer he would last. Roscoe had gone through something similar. We would have to pick him up under his stomach until we got outside where he would collapse immediately on the grass when we took our support away. From there he would pick at his dinner and do his business. We did this for three days before I said "Enough!"
I was watching Otis carefully because I didn't want him to have to suffer the same indignities. When he got to the point where his legs could no longer support him I said it was time. The family said goodbye and I took him to the vet.
When it comes to emotional issues my husband is a bigger softie than he would let on. He cannot handle this aspect of animal ownership well and the sad chore always falls to me. I love having dogs but the sad truth is they don't live as long as we do and that is a fact of life we have to deal with. In the meantime we do the best we can to ensure they live in a wonderful, happy, and safe environment.
We were definitely not a one dog family anymore, and the loss of Otis left a big hole. Even Elmo seemed to be looking for his pal. Carli had been talking about having her own puppy. Like all kids who want a dog there were the absolute promises that she would totally take care of all it's needs. She promised to feed him, pick up his poops, bathe him, play with him, and whatever else would be necessary. I knew that it wouldn't really happen, but it was time to get a new dog anyway, so what the heck.
I was pretty sure I was done with dog shows by then so we looked in the paper for something local and found a litter of Chesapeake Bay Retrievers in Taft, a tiny town about 30 minutes away.
I had see Chessies at the dog shows, and I've got to say, the father of this litter did not resemble them much. He was the biggest and most rambunctious Chesapeake I've ever seen. If I had read John Grogan's book Marley and Me before then I would have politely said "We'll keep on looking" and backed away.
two month old Chester
Carli picked out a pup and held him in her lap on the way home. I persuaded her to name him "Chester". Gee, I wonder how many Chesapeakes are named that? But it was easy to remember; Chester the Chesapeake. I never even bothered to send in his registration papers. Both his parents did not have the same "type" I'd seen at shows. Like I said, I knew I wasn't going to show again, and we were definitely going to have this dog neutered early, something we'd never done before. (It must be a "man" thing. The husbands always seem to be against neutering, like it's somehow going to transfer to them and make them "less of a man.")
Chester came home and he and Elmo immediately took to each other. Chester filled the missing dog role in Elmo's life and Chester had a new dog family member to replace the ones he'd been taken from.
Chester & Elmo
Unfortunately Chester turned out to be a bit of a disappointment as far as a hunting dog goes. Let me just put it this way: If he's in the same room with you and you sneeze, he runs for another room. Sometimes I'll have a sneezing fit and the first sneeze he'll try to climb on my lap, but as I continue he runs to hide. I don't know why he has this odd idiosyncrasy. We always try to reassure him that everything's okay, but there is something in his brain that can't accept it.
Chester & friend
The other thing with Chester is he loves to climb on the table to look out and about. We've caught him on the dining room table a few times. I suspect he jumps down when he hears us coming. It's not really that he's looking for scraps because the table is bare. He just likes to be up high and survey his dogdom.
Surveying his dogdom
I've heard it said that Chesapeakes have a peculiar, very disagreeable, distinctive odor when they get wet. (I think most wet dogs stink anyway!) While this is somewhat true of Chester, it's not as bad as I had been led to believe. He does love to swim. We are fortunate enough to have our lot back up to a couple hundred acres of water storage ponds. When the ponds are full we often open the gate to the back and Chester goes racing to the water. He leaps in and swims around and around, and back and forth, barking at his own splashing feet. This continues until he has to come to the edge of the water, vomit the gallons of water he has swallowed, perhaps poop and pee what has gone even further and then go back and do it all again. It is very difficult to get him out of the water unless he's already worn out from all his swimming.
The ponds are currently not full because work is being done back there and we noticed Chester is getting a bit of a paunch. I hope they finish soon and refill. He needs his exercise.
One day when Carli was about 15 (about five years after we brought Chester home) she came in the door carrying a little yellow puppy. She claimed she rescued him from the street where he'd almost been hit by a gardening truck.
Upon closer examination, the puppy appeared to be a purebred Golden Retriever, about eight weeks old. I really didn't want a third dog and especially not a golden retriever. My sister had been given a pair several years earlier because their owner could no longer take care of them anymore. Every time I saw her she had long blond strands of dog hair all over her clothes. (We all have dark hair, well, gray hair colored dark now.)
My husband was even less thrilled than I. But we agreed the best thing to do would wait a few weeks and look in the paper every day for a "lost" ad. My husband also drove the neighborhood looking for flyers of a lost puppy. I didn't put an ad in the paper because #1: "lost" ads were free and "found" ads were not; and #2: if I had put an ad in who knows who would've called to claim him? It could have been someone lying to get a nice dog. I didn't want to take that chance.
After several weeks of seeing nothing we had to come to the conclusion that we now had a third dog. We named him Gus. We took him to the vet (a new place, closer to home) to start his vaccinations. She even checked for a microchip, but found nothing. The staff were all surprised that such a nice puppy had gone unclaimed.
The vet told us there were two types of golden retrievers. They were great family pets either way, but there were the kind that were very active and needed lots of exercise (hyper), and there were the cool, calm, relaxed, laid back type. We had yet to see what we had.
Gus relaxing at my desk
We got lucky. Gus is very laid back. He'll happily plop down on the sofa with his head in my lap. He often lays at my feet while I'm typing. He has the same type of look in his eyes that Roscoe had. He just wants to make his humans happy.
Gus & Chester
The first time my husband took Gus hunting with him it was to hunt quail. Gus had never had any sort of training so he really didn't know what to expect. He shot a quail but it was only wounded and ran into some brush on the side of a very steep hill. As my husband walked along looking for the bird he spotted it hunkered down about five feet away. He called Gus over and pointed to the bird (isn't it supposed to be the other way around?). Gus walked up to the quail and began to lick it. He's such a gentle soul! Nowadays he knows what he's supposed to do and happily finds and retrieves the downed birds. That dog has natural talent!
Elmo & Gus sleeping
Eventually came the inevitable day when Elmo started doing poorly. He was only nine years old. His breathing was becoming more labored and he wasn't getting around too well anymore. He was stone deaf and his eyes were cloudy. He suddenly became incontinent. His time had come. My husband wanted to go to the vet with me. I think he was hoping she could give him a shot or some pills and he'd be cured, but in my heart I knew better.
After examining him she gave us the bad news. His heart was not healthy and had fluid built up around it. There was really nothing she could do for him. At this rate he would not have lasted out the week on his own. She added he just wasn't the same Elmo she had come to know. I agreed. He didn't seem happy anymore. The decision was made and my husband left the room to wait for me in the truck.
A few weeks later my husband surprised me by saying he really liked having three dogs around. I wasn't ready to get another just yet. That wouldn't happen for another six months.
one more left...
