Furry people

For a couple of weeks I have let this puppy who bounded into our lives take over my days. It has been exciting and fun and periodically dreadfully frustrating. Puppy training class last night was FABULOUS and I am inserting MY needs back into the day. At the moment Rosie is resting peacefully in a crate next to me. We have 2, the larger one is where she will spend any time she needs to be kenneled.

Donna and I were told she was housebroken and crate-trained, and we needed to be sure Rosie could co-exist with the queen of the house, the seal-point siamese cat. Five years ago we became a blended family...Donna and her two rowdy boxers came to live with city-raised indoor cat Cassandra. The pets were all the same age and there was no question about our dedication to them. Before they moved here, the "girls" had full run of a large fenced yard in Windsor Locks, only closed in the house at night, and then happily sharing the bed. Jasper was as strong as an ox, and handling both dogs on leashes was impossible for one person. On property full of wildlife we simply failed to re-train their impulse to chase. It was a disaster. I refused to believe they would try, literally, to kill the cat, and carelessly dropped the leash at the door one day, not knowing the cat was right there. Donna shouted to me and in a blur of howls and growls, fur and claws, I narrowly caught the cat as she climbed the wall and Donna dragged the dogs away, barking, growling and snapping the whole time. We tried everything to get the three to get along...training and crates, leashes and gates. We consulted animal behaviorists and trainers from here to Tufts. We finally resigned ourselves to the wretched arrangement of boxers downstairs and cat up. We went through a series of enclosures and kept the door from the basement out open all day, regardless of temperature. Finally a chain link fence and dog door stood as our reluctant concession.

Eventually they calmed enough to be able to walk with Donna and I each handling one dog, but we didn't have much chance to fully enjoy it. Boxers have a predisposition toward heart murmur and heart disease, which we did not know. One Thursday night Jasper's breathing was labored and we drove fast to the emergency animal hospital. Jasper spent that weekend there, eluding exact diagnosis but on heart medication. She saw a specialist vet on Monday and was cleared to come home, no heart medication, just a modification in diet. 8 hours later it was clear she was not well...in hindsight we figured out she was on her way to full renal failure. There was no missing the acute respiratory distress. We loaded her in the van to get back to the vet as quickly and calmly as possible. She died, in agony and in Donna's arms, as I merged into rush hour traffic, watching a nightmare unfold in the rear-view mirror.

Jasper and Cheyenne had never been separated from each other in the 8 years they lived together. Cheyenne was a tricky escape artist but it was the challenge that motivated her. One day we heard a bark from an odd angle and looked out to find Cheyenne up on the deck, scratching at the boards, desperate to get back to Jasper below her. Now what would she do? When we came home without Jasper Cheyenne was curled in a tight ball, looking at us with what I felt was knowing. Of course we see ourselves and our own humanity in our furry creatures. That smart girl had never forgotten a command word, just ignored them when her best buddy was around. Anxious to be with us all the time, she was willing to forge a truce, and very willing to have further training. For a year we enjoyed her antics off leash~ she loved to dawdle around for a minute and then RUN as fast as she could toward us. She and Cassandra had moments like this, much to our amazement. What should have been a easily curable infection revealed the fateful murmur. This time we were prepared, this time we were able to call the shots, once we had all the information. We nursed her at home until the day her discomfort exceeded our need to hang on to her, and we took her to our own home vet to calmly ease her pain for good.

It has taken us over a year to commit to another dog. When we were ready life wasn't...I was recovering from back surgery and Connecticut was a sheet of snow and ice for months. The economic news was getting more and more grim, and inevitably close to home. Now our eyes are wide open to the cost of good veterinary care, and we wanted to be sure we could handle all the unexpected things.

She is a good dog, this Rosie, loving and bright. On the petfinder.com website she was listed as a "German Shepard Dog, Mixed", but when she got off the animal transport truck that didn't quite fit. Her vet papers described her as "Boxer, Red, Mixed" but I think we just wouldn't see it. It doesn't matter what type of dog she most resembles, but now there is no denying the boxer in her. Our hope was to both rescue a dog and rescue ourselves~ pet lovers know the creature does more for you than you could ever do for it. You might think our grief at losing Cheyenne and Jasper a year apart would be a bit smaller by now, and it is, but we still shed tears now and again. To watch Rosie and Donna last night, I know our changed family is just right. They each had expressions of pure joy a good part of the time, and for me that is worth just about anything. There are moments and looks Rosie has that make me think, just for a moment, that Cheyenne might be reincarnated. If there is a heaven where Cheyenne and Jasper (and all of our lost loved ones) play in joy and peace, I am sure they would look at us and see they trained us right, and sent us a pup who would teach us even more.