Bad dog!
When we adopted our new dog from the local shelter six months ago, it had been four years since my yellow lab, Jessie, passed away. She was two when I got her, and 13 when I had to help her pass onto the great beyond. I'd had her longer than I'd had my husband, my son, or even my own last name. She was my only family when my earlier marriage ended. Together, Jessie and I climbed mountains, swam oceans, and weathered hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, snow storms, a broken marriage and many changes of residence. Like most labs, she loved children and a good meal. She was scared of cats. She was gentle, mellow, and had a wicked sense of humor and perfect manners. But there came a time when she couldn't control her bowels or bladder, she was almost totally deaf, and lived in constant pain. The day she fell off the ramp and ripped a hole in her side, we knew it was time. We'd already set an appointment four days off for the vet to come to the house to euthanize her, but we couldn't make her wait any longer. So we loaded her in the car, drove to the vet's, and parked out front under a big live oak tree. The vet came outside, told us what to expect, and then gave us a couple minutes to say our goodbye. She took only one more breath after the shot was administered.
In the four years since her last breath, I never stopped missing her. My six-year-old son had no recollection of Jessie, and had been begging for years to get a dog of his own. I'd bought as much time as I could with a tankful of fish and a cat.
Peaches is about a year old, maybe a year and a half. She's a mix of American Bulldog and something else. She weighs about 60 pounds, and she's beautiful, athletic, powerful, and a doofus. Her fur is white, except for her brown ears, a beauty mark next to her right eye, and the bullseye around the base of her tail. Her face and her belly are pink. Through her fur you can see black speckles on her skin that make me think she's got some hound in her.
She loves kids, other dogs, and whatever you're eating, including apples and bananas. She loves to fetch and can play the game for hours on end; my husband and I take turns when we tire out. She loves to chase cats. She loves to snuggle, and she's too strong for me to shove her off the sofa or out of my bed. She loves to watch Animal Planet, cocking her head left and right. If the onscreen animals leave the screen, she sniffs around behind the TV looking for them; failing to find them there, she checks on the other side of the wall in the living room.
She chews books, furniture, candles, shoes, dog beds, my son's toys, hand cream bottles and pretty much anything she can get her powerful jaws around. She's allergic to soy, corn, wheat, fleas and something else we haven't figured out yet. She steals sandwiches or entire loaves of bread off the kitchen counter. She jumps and claws at us when she's not getting enough attention. I have bruises on my arms, legs and feet from her toenails. One of my front teeth is loose from getting bonked in the face by her massive head over the weekend; I'm praying it doesn't become discolored or fall out (my tooth, I mean). If you tell her to do something she doesn't want to do, she refuses. If you're adamant about your demands, she'll usually acquiesce, but she'll grumble sassily about it. If you scold her, she drops her ears, tucks her tail and whimpers. She snores loudly, and sleeps best when our little boy climbs into her bed with her to take a nap.
And I've never loved a dog more than I love Peaches...longer, maybe, but not more.