A Good Dog

A few months ago our dog Zeus suddenly died. He was only 5 years old and healthy as a horse. Or so we thought. He would fetch tennis balls until we quit throwing them....he would run like the wind to catch them on the first bounce. He was my dog and my best buddy. Early on a saturday morning he woke me up, heaving. I quickly put him out and within 20 minutes he was laying dead on the back porch. His sudden death still haunts me.....did I miss warning signs? Could I have done something???? In reality I know there was nothing I could have done in 20 minutes. And the evening before he was still fetching balls.....there was no real sign he was sick, except my daughter and I noticed a slight change in his breathing. But nothing that couldn't wait til monday.

I never thought losing a dog could be so painful. And I never realized how much a relied on him for companionship while I worked at home. Or what a huge part of the family he was. I think we lasted 2 weeks without a dog. The house was too quiet. There was no one to greet us when we got home. No one to alert us that the UPS man was here. And I had no one to talk to during the day. It was time to start looking for a new family member.

At first I said NO puppy. It was going into winter and I didn't want to house train a puppy that time of year. So we went to Animal Friends and looked at 1-2 year old dogs that needed a home. The few we looked at all had issues. And one hated cats (we do have 1 cat). And they all would need house trained and taught manners. None of them were right for us. We were sad. My oldest daughter pointed out that if these older dogs all needed trained, why not get a puppy? Why not indeed? And so we looked on petfinder.com at the shelters in our area and found Snoopy. He was an older puppy at 12 weeks and the last of a litter of 12. I knew if we went to meet him, we would have to adopt him. And that is exactly what happened : )

Snoopy is now 7 months old. He is house trained and is learning how to fetch. As a puppy, he doesn't quite get the hang of dropping the ball yet : ) I like to say he is a "designer" dog and call him a labra-dober-beagle-hound. He is actually just a mutt, but he is a stinkin' cute mutt. I forgot what it is like having a puppy around. I have to compare it loosely to having a 2 year old child. He is into everything, constantly wants attention and has to be with me ALL the time. He even has a soft puppet he sucks on like a pacifier. Sometimes he drives me nuts with how he follows me around. I can't walk from one side of the room to the other without him behind me. Every time I put my coat on, he thinks he is coming with me....but some places you can't take a dog.

He is a pest, and a stinker and a shadow. But he is my new assistant and doorbell in training. I still miss Zeus, his time with us was too short.....but sometimes Snoopy is so much like Zeus, I swear Zeus is telling him what to do. How to win our hearts and how to give us that certain look to get that treat.