Dogs Are Family Too (Part Three)

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...

Dogs Are Family Too, continued

Roscoe was gone and Otis was without canine companionship. He was beginning to show his age. I've heard that sometime getting a new puppy can revive the spirits of an older dog. It was worth a try, wasn't it?

Once again it was time to decide on what breed to get. I really wanted to get back into showing. I wanted another sporting breed. I wanted something kind of different, unusual. It had to be AKC registered, as I was totally unfamiliar with the UKC or any other dog registries. I thought of Mikki with her whiskery terrier face. That look always appealed to me. Yet I didn't want something that would need constant grooming either.

As I flipped through my dog breeds book I paused first on the Bracco Italiano. It is an Italian pointing dog. Who would've thought? It looked kind of like a spotted bloodhound with a docked tail. The book said they were an ancient breed and very rare. I really liked the looks and description but realized they were not AKC registrable. Maybe one day I would get one.

The next dog I looked at was a dog called a Barbet. It looks similar to an untrimmed poodle. I knew poodles were hunting dogs at one time, and the way their hair is cut was to make it easier to swim yet protect their joints and vital organs when retrieving in icy waters. But I kept going because they are not common in the US either and my husband would never consent to having something that looked like a poodle. Also it was not an AKC breed.

Then I saw a Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. They seemed to meet my requirements. They were good family dogs, they weren't very common, they had a very cute whiskery face, and grooming requirements were as simple as a weekly brushing. They were supposed to be an all around hunting dog, equally adept at hunting upland game and retrieving ducks over water. That would be the next dog for us.

I bought the latest issue of Dog World magazine and checked the back pages for ads. (This was still before the internet really took off and long before we owned our first computer.) I found a breeder in Michigan and began a telephone correspondence.

It might be interesting to note at this point that all these decisions were made by myself, without any input by or knowledge of my husband. Now to break the news to him.

I convinced him that Otis needed a dog companion and stressed the versatility of the Wirehaired Pointing Griffon. Somehow he believed all my lines. Or is it just that he loves me so much he'll go along with my schemes to keep me happy? (Roll eyes here.)

We picked up our little bundle of joy at LAX, the same terminal where we had picked up Victor, the Karakul ram. We had him home for just a few days when he started acting depressed and had mucousy diarrhea. My heart sank. I had just named him Worf, after the Star Trek character.

The vet confirmed my worst fears: it was parvo. The little guy didn't make it. I called the breeder to relay the news. Even though he had given the pups their first shots it was not enough yet to protect them. He was dealing with similar problems with the puppies he still had at home. He assured me a replacement puppy would be shipped with his next litter, due in the next several months.

In the meantime I decided to get another puppy, this time from a breeder in Oregon. Duke was a few weeks older and had an additional set of shots, but I still watched him carefully for signs of parvo. He was okay.

Duke
True to his word, the Michigan breeder sent another puppy many months later. I was paranoid with fear that this puppy would come down with parvo too, but my fears were eased. He was totally healthy. We named him Elmo.

Three puppies? Elmo, Carli, Duke

My reasoning for getting two Griffons was simple. There were not very many around and I needed at least one other to compete against in the conformation ring in order to earn at least a minor point. This way I would bring my own competition with me and guarantee that one of the dogs would get a point. The hard part would be to get the required major points. I would have to travel to areas where there were usually a few more Griffons shown in order to try for the coveted majors.

You are probably wondering how I could show two dogs at once. It was easy. My friend Vicki was breeding and showing Mastiffs. We'd travel to shows together, share hotel rooms, and help each other out in the ring as needed.

Before Elmo was old enough to show we took Duke and one of her mastiffs to a show near Vallejo. We had left the dogs in the hotel room while we went to get a quick bite in the downstairs restaurant. We felt safe doing this because our dogs were house dogs after all and used to being inside. We fully expected them to fall asleep while we were gone.

Duke

After our dinner we were casually strolling back to our room at the end of the hall when we heard a big CRASH! We stopped and looked at each other. Was that from our room? BANG! Our stroll turned into a dead run.

We hurriedly opened the door, fully expecting to encounter a total disaster. It wasn't too bad, I guess, but it was bad enough. The dogs had obviously had quite the party while we were gone. The bedspread was on the floor. Vicki's make-up case was no longer in the bathroom, but now it's contents were spread all over the bedroom floor. The plastic wastebasket had chew marks. The floor to ceiling curtains were slightly askew. Worst of all was the large pile of poop in the middle of the floor.

Upon seeing the last I turned to Vicki and said, "That didn't come out of my dog." She had no choice but to agree. We cleaned up as best we could and discovered it really wasn't as bad as it had first appeared. There was of course the wastebasket that suffered the worst damage. After all that the only other damage we could find was a tiny one inch rip on the bed spread and a smaller tear in the curtains.

We carefully arranged the curtains so the rip was not visible, but we knew we'd have to confess to the other damage. The next morning before we checked out we called the front desk and told them about the damage. They said they would have to send someone up to inspect the room and then they could tell us how much the extra charges would be.

We waited as long as we could but ring time was fast approaching. We called down to the front desk one more time. They said we could leave and they would simply add the charge to my credit card. We agreed to that and took off for the show grounds.

We swore to each other that our husbands must never find out. As it turned out, the extra charge was only about $30. Whew! That was probably one of the funniest adventures we ever had.

Elmo, left; Duke, right

Eventually the time came when both Elmo and Duke had earned all the minor points they could. It was a waste of time and money to keep going to shows where they couldn't earn a major. At one show in the Los Angeles area I was approached by a couple asking if I had any Griffons available for sale. It was then that I decided to let Duke go. He had been getting a little too "friendly" with my little daughter at home lately and the timing seemed right. The people I sold him to wrote me a note with some pictures a few weeks later. They were thrilled with him and their German Shorthaired Pointer had the companion dog she'd been lacking. And yes, they had Duke neutered.

I found a professional handler to show Elmo for a while. I was hoping he could do what I could not: finish Elmo's championship. He did okay with Elmo, and given enough time and money probably would have finished him, but I was definitely running out of the latter. It was getting a little too expensive and we did miss him at home. So much for my dreams of the Westminster Kennel Club Show at the Madison Square Garden in February.

Elmo with handler, going away

...not done yet!