Snap By Snap

Buffy, Gladys, Mr. Brett, Teddy, Toby . . . and Goldie.

Might pets be the mine canaries of our families? The healthier and happier we are, the better their life is. When circumstances, physical health, or mental health are stressed to the breaking point, our pets also suffer. The pets in my life have been no different.

Buffy is the first dog I remember.

I remember sitting on the back porch with one arm around Buffy and a bag of dry dog food between my feet. "One for you, and one for me." I can still taste that dusty, salty, dry, dog food: Kind of like crunchy freeze dried beef broth. I don't have a very good memory for how long we had Buffy, but he was an outside dog, and was ignored quite a bit of the time. In fact he ended up with a trip to the pound that I've been told had something to do with "no one takes care of this dog!" They didn't tell me that, though, since I was a little kid, so they just told me that he'd run away up the hill. I watched that hill for a long time.

We did not know what we were doing when we brought Toby home. We were in our early 20's, living in an apartment with a small backyard, and ready to practice our parenting skills on something living. He was a rescue - his family had moved away and left him in the garage, and it left him with some issues. As you can see in the photo above, Toby had a zest for life. He played, dug, chewed, ran, and drooled constantly. He was a smart dog who loved his toys and could go get the toy you named with 100% accuracy. He'd play with anything. He loved raw potatoes to toss around when he could steal them, balloons (which he carried by the knot, so as not to break them), and any sock that might drop from the dryer. He failed obediance school. Unfortunately for Toby, we made a common 20-something mistake. We plunged into pet ownership before we had quite enough stability in our lives. When we moved to another city, we had to find him another home. Our nephew was shocked that we could consider getting rid of Toby. He asked us, "When you have kids, will you get rid of them, too?" Ouch. Leave it to a 7 year old to lay it all out there. Fortunately we did find Toby a wonderful home with his groomer, two other English Springer Spaniels, and no kids (so that his occasional bursts of extremely bad temper would not be as dangerous).

After Toby, we waited a long time. We waited for that elusive stabilty, for a home with a backyard, and for our daughter to be old enough to help in the process.

Next blog: Goldie.