More than just a dog

Today we got the news we knew would come eventually. Our former dog, Shadow passed away (I say former because we had to give her up in order to come to China, one of the sacrifices we made for this journey. We feel very fortunate that we found a home for her where she would be loved and treated like a member of the family and not just a dog.). We looked long and hard to find the right breed and we found the right combination with the Boxer. We visited several places until we found the right puppy and we did with Shadow. We picked her up and she traveled home with us in Tammy’s lap, she was sooo little. She came from a lineage of show dogs but she didn’t have quite the right smile to be able to show but we didn’t care, she was our dog. On the way home, we took her to Petsmart and she got to tour the store riding in the small compartment of the shopping cart. Sitting on her sheepskin blanket, riding around like a queen as everyone fawned over her, she was in her element already.

Up until that point, we had cats so it was different with the dog. She was like another child, watching to ensure she didn’t pee on the floor (or worse). Getting through the teething of the dog, those little puppy teeth are sharp. Watching her start as a small puppy with big feet, growing into those feet was difficult. When she was still small the kids would tease her but running around the house with her chasing them and they would jump on the couch. She wasn’t big enough to make that jump but she tried and was denied. She never really seemed to bark very often except when she was playing. Someone would come to the door and she would run through the house and hit the door with her front paws (BAM!) trying to get a look at who was there. It scared the beejeepers out of many people, especially since many mistook her for a pit due to her color (she was a brindle and not fawn which is the more common color associated with the breed).

It took some time but we got her trained and everything became much easier. She always was trying to lick your face, it never satisfied her to just be there; she wanted you to know she was there. We tried to break her of jumping up on people but it was just part of her personality. She wanted to see your face, if you sat down, she was going to put her paws in your lap and get her face to yours. Her tongue was always working. She quickly became a member of the family and we took her just about everywhere with us. We kept to the crate training so she rarely ever slept outside the crate unless a special circumstance arose. But she didn’t seem to mind. First thing in the morning, she would go outside and then come in the house and make a running beeline for the bedroom (all of them, she would work her way from one room to the next to see who was up). If the door wasn’t closed, she would leap on to the bed to let you know it was time to get up. If I didn’t get up, she would start to gnaw on me through the blankets, sometimes she would give up and then just lay down or if it was a cold day, she would try to get under the covers (even if it meant she pulled the covers off of you while she was trying to burrow down to where it was warm).

We tried to keep her off the furniture but when one of her buddies came over for a visit, she watched and figured, “If he can do it, I can do it” so from that point on it was tough to keep her off the furniture (after all, she was a person…wasn’t she?). When we would visit my parents, if you turned your back….she was on the loveseat (which was a huge no-no) or on the bed. She would always sit “next to” (more like on top of) Tammy in the morning. She never seemed to realize that she wasn’t a lap dog; she would just climb up and then push up against you as she just dropped into place. She had to be next to someone, she just was a people dog…she wasn’t satisfied with being at your feet; she had to be right up next to you. Even in my recliner, she would climb up and lay down despite the fact that it wasn’t really made for more than one person. She was coming up to lay down either way…if I didn’t like it, I could always leave and just give her the whole chair to lie down. If you got up, it was going to happen anyhow.

We tried not to feed her people food but every so often, she would get a treat. Sundays, when I would make a fried egg sandwich, she would sit in front of me and just stare, drool dripped down her jowls, liking her chops. She looked so pathetic that I would always just give her a small piece. I knew she could eat the whole thing and more but it wasn’t going to happen. We learned that you couldn’t turn you back here either. One night, we cooked burgers and dogs and I brought the dogs to the table, placing on dog in a bun at each place and then went back outside for the burgers. I returned and we got to the table when Jacob asked where his hotdog was. We didn’t have any visible evidence of the crime but there was a strong circumstantial case against the dog. She never confessed but we knew. One Easter, we came home from church to find little pieces of colored foil littered all over the house. It took a little bit of time but we finally realized that someone had eaten Jacob’s chocolate Easter bunny (about 12 ounces of chocolate). We knew that this wasn’t good for the dog but when we called the vet, we found out that it wasn’t a problem due to her size. Again, we didn’t have a witness to the crime but I don’t think the cats conspired against the dog (“Hey Lucky, let’s frame the dog and see if they’ll get rid of her.”, “Good thinking, I hate that dog!”).

She never really outgrew the puppy in her. She would fetch balls and chase the water coming from the water hose (she would try to bite the stream of water and then drink from the hose). Those ears would be flopping while she ran around doing whatever. She had a habit of running around the loveseat in the living room like she was a small dog but she wasn’t. You could hear the nails just tearing away at the carpet as she tried to take the corner at full speed. She wasn’t much of a guard dog, she wanted to meet everyone, unless it was around me. I would play around with the kids or Tammy and she didn’t like it one bit. She would bark and then would get a hold of my arm in her mouth and just knaw away. She was letting me know that she was playing but if she chose to, she could hurt me. Sometimes all she could do was just try and get me with her front teeth, it made a funny sound that I can’t write but it was still funny as she tried to work on my arm like a kid with corn on the cob. She tried to keep the rabbits and squirrels out of the yard but many times she was so eager to get outside (when we said “squirrel”) that she would end up running right past it while she headed to another spot. I don’t know what she would’ve done with the squirrel had she caught it anyhow. Once the squirrel was outside of the yard, she would bark and just hop up and down in the fence letting the squirrel know not to come back. She would do the same at my parent’s place when the squirrel would come to eat out of the bird feeder. She would race across the yard, jumping at the fence to get that darned squirrel out of the feeder.

We learned that there are two inherent issues with Boxers. One was flatulence…need I say more (pppffffttttt….it wasn’t me). The other was heart issues. She collapsed at soccer fields and we thought we had lost her on that day as she was limp and didn’t show any signs of life as we rushed her to the emergency vet clinic. It was then that I realized how much this dog meant to the family (and how much an emergency vet costs….pay before you leave please). She pulled through and we had to hook her to a monitor for a couple of days (she really looked ridiculous and hated that thing strapped to her back) while we waited on test results. It turned out that this was common to the breed and in most cases; the first episode was the only episode. So she got put on heart medication and she went along just like nothing had happened.

The weekend I had to take her to PA and drop her off was a really tough day. Warren and I made the journey to try and make it easier on all of us. We knew she was going to a great home but it didn’t make it any easier. As she loaded up in Melanie’s van and sat down, she just looked at me as I said goodbye and closed the door. Perhaps she knew, or maybe I just wanted her to know that it was for the best for her, we would never have given her up under normal circumstances but this wasn’t normal. Taking a dog on a journey halfway around the world, living in a small apartment in the city just didn’t seem right. Instead she headed to PA (her own little journey) to live on a farm with a large family that was eager to have her. We would get updates and photos of Shadow fitting in to her new location just fine, we knew she was being spoiled even more now than she was when we had her. We knew that one day we would receive the news of her passing but it doesn’t make it any easier despite the fact that we haven’t seen her in months, we still talked about her often, and laughing about the “stupid dog”. We feel very badly that she didn’t have more time with her new family and know that this is just as hard on them as it is on us (if not harder). She had an episode while out playing with the kids and didn’t pull through this time. Although we don’t see her, we still will miss her (before there was some comfort knowing she was still around and doing well). She was a great dog, we were lucky to have shared our lives with her and we know that we will never find another one quite like her. You can say that she was "just a dog" but she was much, much more than that to us.