Dogs I Have Knowned

The other day I was trying to remember all the dogs I’ve ever owned.

The first was Ella, short for “Cinderella,” a medium-sized black mix who barked incessantly. This was back in the era when a dog stayed outside, chained to her doghouse, and that was where she lived. No one thought of it as a cruel arrangement.

But, as I say, she was a nonstop barker. In fact, one of the first phrases my little brother Eric learned to say—shouting at her from the kitchen window—was, “Ella! Be kawock!”  Which was his version of what he heard other family members shouting from the same location: “Ella! Be quiet!”

We never bonded in any way (Ella and me, not Eric and me), and one day she was gone. This was also back in the era when you could call the dog catcher to remove your canine. Is that what happened to her? I don’t know, but I hope her next owner didn’t keep her chained to a doghouse.

Our next dog was Missy. She was about the size of a chihuahua—no doubt she had some chihuahua blood mixed in her DNA somewhere—and mostly black with white markings. She was a very sweet dog, small enough and calm enough to live inside with us. She was ours through much of my growing-up years.

Not long after we adopted her, early one evening I was sitting in the living room watching TV when I heard tires squeal on the street out front, followed by a frenzied, pain-filled yipping. I ran outside—Mom was already out there—and Missy had run to the front door of our house, quivering with fear and still yipping with pain.

Few things in life engender more profound compassion in the human heart than seeing an animal in distress. And when the animal is your dog, your compassion grows exponentially.

After assessing her, Mom determined Missy had no broken bones. She would say later that she thought the car didn’t really run over her—Missy went “under the car and got tumbled around.” We were to find out later, though, that after that event, Missy would have a lifelong struggle with epileptic seizures. We had to give her a pill every day, and even with that she would sometimes seize up, panting and crouching with her forepaws out in front of her, rigid. A seizure usually lasted a few minutes. We boys would hold her and comfort her until it subsided, and she would look at us the way dogs look at humans in such situations, as if to say, “I’m sorry I’m doing this, but I can’t help it, and it scares me. It will stop, right? And did I mention that I’m sorry?”

She gave us that same type of look once when our family was on an outing and accidentally drove off without her at the end of the day. We didn’t go far down the road before we realized it and turned around, hurrying back to get her. There she sat, on a church’s front steps, looking toward the road, head drooped a bit, ears down, saying (it seemed to me), “I’m so sorry that I did whatever I did to make you leave me! So sorry!” She was welcomed back into the car with many hugs and as much love and affirmation as we could shower on her.

Living in a household with four boys, Missy loved to rough-house, and one of her favorite games was tug-of-war. She would clamp onto one end of a rag, growling fiercely, and, because she was so small, we could pull her around the room as she hung on to it—we could even lift her off the floor a couple of feet, and she would continue to growl fiercely and stay latched on. She loved that game!

Missy was the perfect dog for our family. I have no memory at all of her death—perhaps it happened after I’d left home for college?—and I am grateful for that gap in my memory.

The next two dogs I owned were both mistakes.

When Cindy and I were first married, someone told us of a litter of puppies in a shed somewhere (details are sketchy now) and said that we could have one. We drove out to the country, found the shed, and opened the door to be greeted by the rough-and-tumble excitement of eight puppies. Because of that human-to-canine compassion that I mentioned earlier, we picked the saddest-looking one, a little brown fellow who apparently had scoliosis. We took him back to our apartment and then asked our landlady if we could have a dog. She said OK, but she wasn’t happy about it.

That little fellow cried and cried and cried all night long. It was a miserable night. My brother Keith was visiting, sleeping on the couch. We thought maybe if the puppy slept with him, it would quiet down. Nope. All it did was cry louder and pee on his blankets.

Bleary-eyed and grumpy the next morning, we determined that back to his brothers and sisters he must go—and so he did, much to our landlady’s relief (and ours!).

The next dog mistake we made was named Chester.

After we moved to a different location but before we had children, Cindy and I adopted Chester. Someone brought him and his siblings to church, and after the Sunday night service we went out to pick a puppy from the back of a station wagon. Chester made quite an impression, bounding up to us, jumping up and down, wagging his tail—just trying to make himself as endearing as possible. “Aw look!” we said. “He likes us! Why, clearly this is the Lord’s will!”

Chester was mostly wire-haired terrier, with the emphasis on “wired.” He was UP and ON all the time. If he was awake, he was hyper, running around, jumping on furniture, exhibiting really manic behavior. Cindy was more patient than I, but he drove me nuts!

Once as I tried to sit on the couch, Chester jumped up, bouncing, scratching at me with his puppy claws (Puppy claws are sharp!), and yipping as though he had just won the Gravy Train lottery. I yelled, “Get! Down!” and swept him off the couch with my left hand. He flew about halfway across the room before tumbling onto the floor.

Don’t worry, he wasn’t hurt. Or if he was, he was too dumb to realize it.

Cindy ran and scooped him up, cradling him in her arms. She was (understandably) not happy with me.

“If you treat our dog this way,” she cried, “how will you treat our children someday?”

I looked intensely at her (emphasis on “tense”). Red-faced and poking an index finger toward that little Tasmanian Devil, I yelled, “I will love our children, but I don’t—love—that—dog!”

Chester found a home somewhere else in short order. By the way, that was nearly forty years ago, and I have yet to sweep any of my children off the couch with my left hand. Or any other hand.

Hey, here’s a tip from someone who has raised and sold dozens of puppies: When you look at a litter, don’t pick the one who’s jumping around with his lil pink tongue hanging out, saying, “Pick me! Pick me!” He’s the livewire. Look for the quiet, pitiful looking little one at the back of the kennel. She’s much more likely to have a calm, undemanding personality.

Of those two choices, Chester was definitely the former. And, oh, we rued the day.

Let’s see. Who was next?

Leggo.

Cindy and I adopted Leggo from the humane society in the early 2000s. He looked sort of like a beagle, and the humane society said he was a beagle, but if he was a beagle, he was the fattest and most blasé beagle I ever saw.

Of course, the kids loved him—Leggo was to them like Missy had been to me and my brothers—but Leggo and I never bonded. Maybe it was because he was such a lazy lump. Maybe it was because, no matter how much you bathed him, he always smelled bad, and I always wanted to run and wash my hands after touching him. Or maybe it was because he was prone to “reverse sneezing,” which meant that at any moment he could start snorting—Snort! Snort! Snort! Snort! Snort! Snort!—you get the idea—for up to five minutes for no discernible reason.

Reverse sneezing was not an endearing trait. But he had good qualities as well. He had learned, in whatsoever state he was in, therewith to be content. And he almost never barked—in fact, I can recall his barking only one time in all of the thirteen years we owned him. It was once when he was in the front yard and chased a squirrel up a power pole. He crouched at the bottom of the pole and let out a beautiful, ringing bay. I couldn’t help laughing. “Leggo! You really can talk!”

Oh, yes, one other negative trait: he was a frequent puker.

I keep trying to think of good traits, but memory keeps dragging me back to his less-than-endearing traits.

Anyway, as I said before, we had Leggo for thirteen years. I’m ashamed to say it—well, just a little bit ashamed—but as the years dragged by I started thinking, “That dog will never die!”

But, as it is with all people and animals, he did die. As a very old dog he started having difficulty breathing. He couldn’t breathe when he rested his head on the floor, so he constantly had to hold it up. We put pillows under his chin so he could rest on them and still breathe, but he wouldn’t use them.

After a day or two of this and some very serious conversations, we decided we needed to put him to sleep. I was elected to take him to the vet for the procedure.

Dogs just take things as they come. He wasn’t upset or uncooperative about going to the vet. A tech called the two of us into a private room and put a blanket on the floor. Leggo squatted on it, struggling to breathe. The vet came in and agreed it was time to let him go. She administered one shot to relax him. (Leggo, predictably, did not react at all when the needle was inserted.) Then she gave him another to slow his body functions down until they ceased.

I sat on the floor with him, as did the veterinarian and the tech. I stroked his fur and rubbed his ears and spoke to him calmly. “Just relax. That’s right, relax. That’s a good dog.” And then, “You always were a good dog, Leggo.” I had to say it because it was true.

Stay tuned for my next post, which will be about the two dogs we own now.

Copyright 2024 by Steven Nyle Skaggs

All the images above are close depictions of the dogs generated by Copilot AI.