True Confessions of a Dog Lover
Alright, I admit it, I love dogs, retrievers, pointers, collies, Shih-Tzu’s, you name it. If they are a dog, I probably will be happy to know them. I have had dogs for over fifty years and plan on having them as long as I can physically take care of them. So yes, I am a dog fanatic. While I have loved every dog I have had, I was one of the lucky ones; I had my once-in-a-lifetime dog. We had a connection that went beyond words, she was an amazing friend, and this is her tale (tail).
Back in the early 1990s, my parents bought a house on a lake. It was a beautiful house but a drag to drive there because you had such a long drive through the mountains.
One dark and stormy night, my wife and I were driving home from their house. The rain was coming down in sheets, and it was almost pitch black outside as we went through the mountain pass on our way home. From the corner of my eye, I saw something moving on the side of the road. I could tell it was a medium-sized dog running along the freeway and knew I needed to stop and try to get it off the interstate. So, I pulled over, and as I opened the door to get out, the dog ran to my car and jumped in. She was big enough to cover both mine and my wife’s lap. Before I could even pet her, she shook herself off, drenching us at the same time.
That was how I met Shadow, a full-grown Black Lab; she had a leather collar but no microchip or identifying tags. I couldn’t believe I had seen her in that downpour or that she would come into a strangers car. But it happened, and for the next ten years, I had my once in a lifetime dog.
I watched for ads in the lost and found and didn’t see one so, after a few weeks, I named her Shadow and adopted her. She settled in like she had lived with me all her life. She was perfectly house trained, was incredible on walks, only barked to let us know someone was there and accepted our cats right away.
When I would walk her, I would lay the leash on her back, and she would never be more than 5’ away, well except that one time. We were walking in my neighborhood when a dog started barking and making noise behind a wooden fence next to us. The next thing I know, the dog shoots out from under the barricade and is streaking towards us. I reached down to restrain Shadow from rushing towards the oncoming dog, but she was not there. Looking down, I saw that Shadow was hiding behind me. So much for a guard dog. Thankfully the other dog’s owner ran out and grabbed it before there were any problems.
Because my wife and I both worked, we left her in a covered and fenced dog run while we were gone. We live across the street from an elementary school, so dozens of kids walked by Shadow’s cage every day. It did not take long for kids to start to go up and say hi to her. She became a favorite for years as she greeted them going to and from school.
Coming home from work one day, I saw Shadow sitting by the back door. Looking at the cage to see how she had gotten out, I found that she had clawed the chain links away from the frame enough to escape. Because she didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t understand what she was telling me, so I fixed the fence and put her back in it. She escaped the next day and was again sitting by our back door. I figured out that she wanted to stay inside now, so I stopped leaving her outside. I had kids come up to me for the next couple of years, asking about her and saying they missed petting her.
We invited friends from church for dinners around Christmas time, and my wife would make these fantastic Hungarian Kiffeles for dessert. Filled with jam and rolled in powdered sugar, they were tasty, but they took a lot of time and effort to make, so they were pretty impressive. We invited the Pastor and his family over for dinner, and while we enjoyed the main course, we had put the cookies on the living room coffee table for an easy to reach desert while we visited. We nearly finished dinner when we heard a clang in the living room. Looking into the living room to investigate the noise, we saw Shadow with her black face now covered with white powdered sugar and busy relishing the last of the cookies. My wife was not amused.
What made Shadow the once in a lifetime dog, though, was her ability to read my moods with uncanny accuracy. My wife and I started a business selling muffin and cookie mixes in 1995. My wife made the mixes, and I was to put together the website, do the customer service, create a catalog, and lots of other computer work, but I had never worked on a computer before. So the first few years was unbelievably stressful for me when I couldn’t get things to work. Shadow was an angel, though; she came over and put her head on my lap as I worked on my PC. Whenever I became distraught, she would put a paw on my lap as well, just to let me know that everything was fine. She just knew when she was needed, which was way too often during those days.
Everything about Shadow was calming; she had a way of bringing peace wherever she went. Even in death. In the fall of 2001, we went out for a walk like a million other times before, but this time she was slower than usual. She only went a block and stopped, looked up to me, and kinda said: “Dad, I need to go home.” We did, and I never took her for another walk.
The following spring, she had a stroke leaving her back legs almost paralyzed. I had to carry her out to go to the bathroom and hold her while she went. But this was my Shadow; she would do it for me, I did it for her, and neither of us complained. She gradually started walking again, but she was slowing down even more now.
I knew the end was near for her, but I had to leave town for a few days so that when she died, I was not there for her; she was the only pet I had that died without me there. She was lying in the kitchen on a sunny Fall afternoon when my wife looked at her; she closed her eyes and stopped breathing. And she was gone, the best dog I ever had.