Marty

I always had dogs growing up. The first one I remember was Bessie. She was a Blue Heeler mix, and was a pretty great dog.  This was the two of us around 1992 (The spots all over me were calamine lotion for mosquito bites, I believe.) The two things I remember the most about Bessie are that she loved trying to get water from the high pressure stream from the hose, and that any time a car was coming, she would run out to the edge of our yard and run alongside the car, barking at it, until the car reached the other end of our yard. Bessie was a couple years older than I, and she sadly died when I was about 10–probably later during the summer this picture was taken.

I don’t remember if it was the same year that Bessie died or the following year that we got Mickey. He was an Australian Shepherd mix. This was us in 2000, I think. According to the progression of photos in the packet, I was all wet and exhausted from washing hogs before the county 4-H fair. Mickey was always happy to hang out with me outside whether I was laying on a blanket reading, or doing some kind of work. He hated cats, had zero interest in coming inside the house (unless there were fireworks or gunshots nearby), and was absolutely unwilling to be contained. The best example of this was when he got neutered. For some reason, they kept him overnight at the vet’s office. They put him in the biggest cage they had, which was 6’x6’x6′, because they’d been warned that he might freak out if he was put in a kennel. The next morning, as the story goes, when the staff came in, Mickey was sitting on the front desk of the vet’s office, looking out the huge front windows, having climbed out of the 6′ tall cage and jumped through the glass window of the kennel room door. Other than his need to roam, Mickey was a great dog, too. He lived to be about 14 years old.

Since then, I haven’t had a dog. I did get to dog sit for my brother and sister-in-law’s dog, Chance, quite a bit. He was a pit bull mix–the sweetest 100 lb. lap dog, ever. When I dog sat for him, we went on ridiculously long walks and hung out watching all sorts of movies.This was a picture my sister-in-law took of Chance and me when I spent a night at their house in 2010.

I always wanted a dog of my own, but I never felt like it was the right time. A couple years after I started teaching. I had bought a house, and wanted a pet, but I felt like I was traveling too much to have a dog. Winnie Cooper and Miss Marple needed a home, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to make a decades-long commitment to a young pet (Winnie was already 12 and Marps was 14 when I adopted them), so I decided that would be a good start for me. It was a good start and, while Winnie actually ended up dying from a brain tumor about a year after they came home with me, Miss Marple lived with me for about 5 years. This was my sad attempt at a “family photo” with Miss Marple (left) and Winnie (right) using the timer on my digital camera in 2009, I think.

The Bearded One and I have been talking about getting a dog for quite a while but, again, it never felt like the right time…until now. We went to the local Humane Society a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t feel like any of the dogs there were right for us then. Then, last Friday, I saw a poster saying that they were having an adoption event last weekend–all dog adoptions would be $50 to celebrate 50 years of the Humane Society doing pet adoptions. We went on Friday night to see if there were any that felt right this time and there were a couple that we were interested in. Jenny was 6 years old and very sweet. Gia was a 7 month old who was so pretty, but she didn’t seem to feel well, so we couldn’t really get a feel for her personality. We decided we’d go back the next morning around the time they opened. We were hoping that Gia would be feeling better so we could get to know her a little.

When we pulled into the parking lot, just a few minutes after they opened, there was a woman outside the front door with a dog on a leash. It was Jenny. We talked to the woman for a minute, and found out she’d decided to adopt Jenny, so that was the end of that. We got inside the building, and I went straight to the kennel room, where a man and his young-ish son had Gia out on a leash. She seemed to be feeling much better, and the man and his son seemed pretty enamored with her, so that was the end of that. We walked around the kennel room feeling pretty disappointed that we’d missed out. We weren’t really sure what kind of dog we were looking for, but we thought we would know it when we found it. And then we saw Sabrina. Well, they were calling her Sabrina. She was a 7-month-old brindle and white “terrier x” according to the sign on her cage, and she was beautiful. One of us stayed with her (so she wouldn’t get adopted out from under us) while the other went to get a leash so we could take her out and see if she was the one for us. She was so sweet, and behaved so well, and she was just the right mix of licks-your-face-a-little-but-doesn’t-try-to-make-out-with you. We found out she had been brought to our Humane Society from a shelter in Oklahoma (that has a high euthanasia rate) on Wednesday of the previous week, and had been spayed just the day before, which is why she hadn’t been on the adoption floor when we were there looking the previous night.

She seemed happy to be with us, even after everything she’s been through, and she just felt right, so we went through the adoption process, and brought her home. She’s been with us for five days and, although her puppy-ness is showing more now that she’s getting comfortable here, we adore her and she seems to return the adoration. So, I finally have a dog. And sweet Marty (that’s what we’re calling her, because she didn’t know “Sabrina”, and it didn’t fit her anyway) has a home. (There are a few reasons we decided to call her Marty, but I might save those for another post.)  Michael Houellebecq (who, according to Wikipedia, is “…a French author, filmmaker, and poet…”) has been quoted as saying, “The love of a dog is a pure thing. He gives you a trust which is total. You must not betray it.” I’m going to do my best to never betray Marty’s trust. Even today, after I helped a vet tech put the dreaded cone on her (because her spay incision seemed to be opening up a little), she seems to trust me (she’s currently snoring on the couch next to me) and is happy to see me (when I’m right in front of her…because she has no peripheral vision with that stupid thing on). Here are a few pictures, because apparently I’m going to be that kind of pet parent:

Peaceful sleep the first afternoon home.

Meeting new friends.

Surveying her new domain.

Happy tail wags, even with a dumb cone on.