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Monday, December 1, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
How I Met Briggsie Beall.....A historical perspective
A historical perspective means: This is going to be a LONG story.....maybe tedious to you. Hope you enjoy reading a personal doggie history anyway.
I have always had dogs in my life. My mom and dad stayed married for over 50 years until my dad died. We lived in a suburb....a really nice place.....a 50's ranch house, almost new when we moved into it in 1954. I grew up with 3 older brothers and 2 younger sisters.......and various dogs. First there was Sam, a little black cocker who used to bite our ankles when we'd run around. For some reason our parents got rid of Sammy Dammy (my mom hated when we called him that, but we had no idea what it meant....I think I was 3 years old). I can't remember why she didn't want Sam anymore. I think he was kind of mean. My mom never grew as attached to dogs like I do. Her dad was a vet, and to her I think they were "just animals." That was her outlook -- the outlook of a woman who survived the big depression of the 30's, an abandonment by her father in the 20's when women really had a hard time making a living. Her mom ran a boarding house. I think after all that "survival" stuff she went through, she viewed animals differently than I do -- and after all, I did NOT live through that stuff. To me, the dog was a member of my family.....another sister or brother really.
Next came Rosie. Rosie was a beagle mix we got when I was about 7 years old. My dad didn't want a dog. My mom did. She thought all kids should have a dog. I figure since she was already taking care of a house full of 8 people she figured what's the problem with one more critter in the house? She told my oldest brother to go get the dog. I specifically remember her saying, "Get the dog unless it's REAL UGLY." HAHAHAHAHAHA.........Rosie was a $10 dog. That was a lot of money back in 1958. She turned out to be almost the best dog in the world. (I say almost because though Rosie was a typically sweet and loving beagle, and she loved us completely, she had "the runnin' off devil" and used to sneak out of the yard and go play with her pals.) She had the typical congestive heart problem of so many beagles and died at the young age of 7. I remember the night she died. I was in puberty....maybe 12....I was in 7th grade. I had sleep interruptions every night at that age (just like I did in menopause...snicker). I heard Rosie go into each bedroom and got up to see what she was doing. She was walking in.....staring at us and going to the next room. She came into our room, with its hardwood floors, and fell down, all splayed out......a little bit foamy around the mouth. I got out of bed again and sat by her, petting her and helped her up. She staggered out into the livingroom, and my dad found her dead in front of the tv in the morning. Even he was crying -- something I'd never seen before. I still remember trying to get through the next few days of school and feeling like an alien......it was the first death I'd experienced, and it was really really hard.
Our next dog was a little beagle named Annie. She was a beautiful little pup. She was just about all trained when she dashed out of the gate as someone walked out of the yard, and ran into the road and was hit by a speeding driver on the side street. It was tragic. Both my parents were gone somewhere. I called numerous vets.......most closed as it was about 8:30 pm.......no one would help. This was before emergency vets....and I was just a little kid. I can still remember bitching out some vet telling him he didn't care much about animals if he wouldn't even help us. The neighbor wanted to shoot her. I completely FREAKED OUT. We tried to get her better, but her back legs were paralyzed. I figured out how to get her rump on a pillow on top of a roller skate in an attempt to help her drag herself around, but my mom said that it was pretty hopeless for her future, and she needed to be put down. My parents had no money. My dad went to the drugstore and talked to the pharmacist who told him what to do and sold him the crap to put the dog down. He and my mom went out in the garage, closed the door and put the poison on a cloth inside a milk carton, put the milk carton over her snout and she died. :( I still remember how MAD I was that they wouldn't just take her to the vet to have it done like everyfreakingone else did in the whole freaking WORLD.
After her we got a little beagle from a puppy mill pet store. She had worms, coughed up huge big worms......it was so disgusting, but the vet fixed her up. She was a goofy dog -- hard to train and chewed up everything in her path. My parents gave her to a family my dad worked with, and the kids just loved her.
As I read this, I'm starting to understand WHY I absolutely refuse to EVER give up on any dog. No matter what, I won't give up on a dog. Kirby was a challenge.....more on that later.
In my mid teens we got Louise, whom we affectionately named Boobers. I have no idea why she was named Boobers. She was Lorrie's dog really -- because after Lorrie had her ileostomy (ulcerative colitis in the 60's) my dad promised her a puppy when she came home. We got her from the dog pound in Detroit and sneaked her up some back stairs in Henry Ford Hospital -- this was before they had all the security in the hospitals that they have now. Then we got Lorrie out of bed and got her down to the hallway, and she came into the hallway and played with Boobers, who looked kind of like a little lion cub. Boobers was soooooooooooooooooo much fun, smart and sweet. She was a really cool dog. One night my stupid brother Jon came home from work and left the damned gate open, and Boobers ran out and got hit by a car on Inkster Road. It was Good Friday, and I remember we were all looking for her, but we couldn't find her anywhere in the neighborhood. My mom had to go to work. I watched her pull her car over a few houses down the street and come running to the house crying, and I saw something brown by her car. Boobers was lying in the ditch and mom saw her while driving to work. I still remember pounding my fists on my mattress in a total psycho rage that she had died.
Having critters is hard.
After Boobers, we got Gus, then Taffy......by now these were my parents' dogs and not really mine anymore. But I used to babysit Taffy all the time when they traveled.
My first dog that was my very own was Loki. Loki was a pup born from a litter owned by our friends Joe and Lori. They had Deedah. Deedah had pups, and Loki was one of her pups, and he was a very very smart and very mellow and cool dog. We had Loki almost the entire time we lived in our Detroit house and he came to this house with us. Loki died in '94 -- on Good Friday -- from a huge cancerous growth he had in his throat. It was incurable, and there was nothing we could do. He gave us YEARS of great doggie companionship and love though. I will always love Loki to pieces.
After he died, I was going to wait until summer and get a little pup whom I could train. Well....um.....I made it 3 weeks and saw that there was an adoption fair at The Detroit Zoo and went, "just to look" and Stan said, "Well, what do you think you'll name this one?" when I told him that....haha. I remember wandering down the aisles......cats......service dogs.....more cats.....dogs!!! And on the back side of one cage was a little black foot sticking out behind him, just like Loki did.....and around the front, there was a young boy. I asked to see him, took him over to a little grassy knoll where he was ecstatic to be out of his cage and was licking and nibbling on my right ear. That did it.....he had to be my puppy. My mom was with me. We were in my little black sports car. I had to sign a bunch of stuff and pay some money and then get him to the car, but he wouldn't walk on a leash....he was nuts. So I picked him up, upside down in my arms and carried him to the car with his big long puppy legs flopping as I walked and his tongue hanging out. He lay on the back seat quietly all the way home.....we went in the house, and he ran to a little rug in front of the hearth and sat quietly. My mom stayed with him while I went to the pet store and got a new beddie for him and some new stuff. He was good.....nice and quiet. That was maybe the quietest he ever was again until he got old. He was the craziest puppy I ever knew, and he was huge. I was very gentle with him because I had been used to gentle and quiet Loki, but this dog was something else. We would walk to get rid of some energy and he'd drag me along behind him, pulling me into bumpers of parked cars and damn near breaking my kneecap on a couple of occasions......he ate anything he could get. He devoured a couch pillow and pooped out the binding which I had to cut as it came out little by little. He uprooted a huge palm tree plant we had and black potting soil was ground into the white carpet with a nice topping of poop and pee. I never knew about crating a dog back then. Finally we came home from a party, and he was eating the cat's female hormone pills, had eaten a pair of my prescription sunglasses and gnawed on one of my asthma inhalers. He was counter surfing in the kitchen. I was afraid he would turn on the stove when we weren't home.....and we didn't have a room to shut him into. We didn't have a fenced yard -- and besides I wouldn't leave him out there alone anyhow. The next day at the church where I was working as organist, a lady told me about crate training. We had already been in obedience training with a questionable trainer -- who should've told me this stuff but didn't -- and the lady at church even told me how to get him used to the crate. That afternoon I went out and bought a great big crate. That crate was what finally kept him -- and us -- safe. I built up his time, and he got used to it. It became his safe spot. Also once I finally got REALLY REALLY mad at him after he chewed up part of the couch. I was so mad I was just yelling and screaming at him. He ran into his crate.....I remember being so mad I was hitting my fist on the crate and saying bad stuff to him. It was kind of that point which seemed to drive home to him that I was IN CHARGE, and that he was not. The thing about Kirbs was that he was an alpha male....he always knew a better way to do things.....he considered himself smarter than me, and I knew that wasn't going to work. He finally got it that day -- that I was the alpha and he was not. He continued to challenge me his whole life, but he always knew after that that I was in charge. And for 12 years he was SUCH a great dog. We had so much fun together. He was maybe the smartest dog I ever knew. He understood everything I said to him -- he might not agree -- but he understood. Unfortunately, he was probably the result of a bad mix -- maybe inbreeding -- because he was sick his whole life. When he was 3 he began peeing blood. We thought it was a bladder infection, and it did go away, but it turned out that much later he had bladder stones. He went through a lot of troubles with that......a broken cruciate ligament, humongous fatty tumors. And he died at the age of 12 from canine lupus which he fought valiantly to overcome but just could not. He was put down on December 14, 2006, my dear dear sweet ole friend......my bunkie buddy.......my big pal......the smartest dog I ever knew who loved us both unconditionally. I was up all night the night before he died......on his bed hugging him, massaging his back and shoulders to help ease his pain. We wanted to give him every chance to win this, and we probably waited too long, but it was the only way. Even then, driving to the vet, which I swear he understood what was going on, he was frantic. I had to ask Stan to stop and get out and get into the back with Kirbs to hold him and calm him down. He went really really fast.....he was so close to death. I have never EVER been so broken up over a dog. I was in horrible mourning for weeks. I still remember New Year's Eve day in 2006 crying from the time I woke up until after midnight.....all day long. It was sooooooooooooooooooo bad.
By about February that year, I started "just looking" at dogs on Petfinder.com. I wasn't going to get a dog until summer...again....yeah right. I saw lots of sweet dogs, and even though I felt really bad seeing the homeless dogs, I wasn't ready............financially we were still recuperating from the many surgeries of Kirbs and the emotional baggage of worrying and fretting over a sick dog for the past 3 years. And then on February 17th or so.......I saw THE FACE......the cutest, sweetest little face. It was Briggs. His name was listed as Briggs. He was in foster care affiliated with a shelter in Oxford, MI. It said he was almost house trained and was crate trained. I called the foster mom. She called me back.........on Saturday morning of President's weekend (and my brother Pete was here for the weekend), Pete and I drove to Oxford to be at the shelter when they opened. When we got there and said we wanted to see Briggs, they told me to go to the kitchen (the shelter is an old house)......and in came little Briggsie on a leash. He ran over to see me when I called to him, sat down on the rug in front of the sink with me and pushed his little body into me, ears (those million dollar long silky ears) held back close against his head, a look of total fear in his eyes, but he seemed to sense that I was okay, because he was pushed real hard into me. I paid the shelter fee, filled out the paperwork, they gave us an old sheet because he might be car sick. I carried him through the crusty snow to the car, Pete drove and I held Briggsie on my lap and tried to calm him. I still remember saying, "AWWWWWWWW!" in my high girly/mommy voice and Pete laughing and saying "What?" and me saying, "His little feet are so silky and soft!"
Poor little Briggsie. He was removed from "a collector" in very early January, '07. There was a slimeball who had a farm. The neighbors complained because of the smell, and it turned out that he had hundreds of animals he was starving.......I won't go into detail........but I think Briggsie was one of the animals removed from there. He and his momma were removed. His momma had heartworm and was still "intact" and in heat and running around a bunch of males who were "intact" as well......they cured her of her heartworm, and she was adopted out. I wish I had known before she was adopted out because I would've taken her too. But poor little Briggsie was scared to death of lots of stuff. He was scared everytime we opened the fridge or a cupboard. I had to move the doggie dishes to a new spot away from the fridge. He would run under the piano everytime we opened the fridge. We were pretty sure someone kicked him around....threw things at him......and who knows what all he went through as a baby....just a pup....trying to survive among a bunch of mistreated animals. He was a chewy boy. We were told that. I got a bunch of good chewing bones, and corrected him very gently every time he went for the wrong thing. I would put one of his chewy bones in his mouth and say, "chew this." He did. I kept an eye on him constantly. He went with me into the bathroom each morning while I showered. Once we got distracted and lost track of him for awhile. He was 'too quiet' and it turns out he was gnawing on a wool rug we hadn't been using. It was rolled up under one of the guest room beds, and he found it. Stan got really mad. He yelled at Briggs. Briggs just stared at him like he had lost his mind. After Stan got done sputtering and had taken the rug down to the basement, Briggs waited for him to calm down, and then he jumped up on the couch next to Stan and put his head on Stan's thigh.....as if to say, "I'm really sorry I screwed up. I'll never do it again," and Stan admired that. They have been best buds ever since. I have never seen Stan take to a dog like he has to Briggsie, and I have never had a dog in all the time we've been married who wasn't totally MINEMINEMINE. Briggsie is OUR dog. I like it. I can go on trips and Stan and Briggs are real happy together. He's turned into a pretty happy, healthy guy. He likes to hunt bunnies, and he has gotten a few.....yuck. It grosses me out -- but it's in his gene pool.....can't be helped. I do go out before him each morning or evening with a flood light and search the yard now to make sure there aren't any bunnies out there for him to get. He also got into a big tussle with a groundhog this past summer. I think he realized that not all critters can be overcome.....because that groundhog gave him a run for his money. I think Briggsie thought it was going to be a new playmate, but the groundhog never came back.
Anyway, Briggsie has turned into a really happy guy. He likes to play and likes people. He's also a wonderful watch dog. His favorite hobbies are snagging tastes of whatever we are eating and sleeping....he does love his naps.
So that's my dog history.........I also have had cats in my past.......I loved them too. All of them were house cats and lived long long lives......but I don't think I'll have anymore cats. I love them, but I'm a dog person.
I have always had dogs in my life. My mom and dad stayed married for over 50 years until my dad died. We lived in a suburb....a really nice place.....a 50's ranch house, almost new when we moved into it in 1954. I grew up with 3 older brothers and 2 younger sisters.......and various dogs. First there was Sam, a little black cocker who used to bite our ankles when we'd run around. For some reason our parents got rid of Sammy Dammy (my mom hated when we called him that, but we had no idea what it meant....I think I was 3 years old). I can't remember why she didn't want Sam anymore. I think he was kind of mean. My mom never grew as attached to dogs like I do. Her dad was a vet, and to her I think they were "just animals." That was her outlook -- the outlook of a woman who survived the big depression of the 30's, an abandonment by her father in the 20's when women really had a hard time making a living. Her mom ran a boarding house. I think after all that "survival" stuff she went through, she viewed animals differently than I do -- and after all, I did NOT live through that stuff. To me, the dog was a member of my family.....another sister or brother really.
Next came Rosie. Rosie was a beagle mix we got when I was about 7 years old. My dad didn't want a dog. My mom did. She thought all kids should have a dog. I figure since she was already taking care of a house full of 8 people she figured what's the problem with one more critter in the house? She told my oldest brother to go get the dog. I specifically remember her saying, "Get the dog unless it's REAL UGLY." HAHAHAHAHAHA.........Rosie was a $10 dog. That was a lot of money back in 1958. She turned out to be almost the best dog in the world. (I say almost because though Rosie was a typically sweet and loving beagle, and she loved us completely, she had "the runnin' off devil" and used to sneak out of the yard and go play with her pals.) She had the typical congestive heart problem of so many beagles and died at the young age of 7. I remember the night she died. I was in puberty....maybe 12....I was in 7th grade. I had sleep interruptions every night at that age (just like I did in menopause...snicker). I heard Rosie go into each bedroom and got up to see what she was doing. She was walking in.....staring at us and going to the next room. She came into our room, with its hardwood floors, and fell down, all splayed out......a little bit foamy around the mouth. I got out of bed again and sat by her, petting her and helped her up. She staggered out into the livingroom, and my dad found her dead in front of the tv in the morning. Even he was crying -- something I'd never seen before. I still remember trying to get through the next few days of school and feeling like an alien......it was the first death I'd experienced, and it was really really hard.
Our next dog was a little beagle named Annie. She was a beautiful little pup. She was just about all trained when she dashed out of the gate as someone walked out of the yard, and ran into the road and was hit by a speeding driver on the side street. It was tragic. Both my parents were gone somewhere. I called numerous vets.......most closed as it was about 8:30 pm.......no one would help. This was before emergency vets....and I was just a little kid. I can still remember bitching out some vet telling him he didn't care much about animals if he wouldn't even help us. The neighbor wanted to shoot her. I completely FREAKED OUT. We tried to get her better, but her back legs were paralyzed. I figured out how to get her rump on a pillow on top of a roller skate in an attempt to help her drag herself around, but my mom said that it was pretty hopeless for her future, and she needed to be put down. My parents had no money. My dad went to the drugstore and talked to the pharmacist who told him what to do and sold him the crap to put the dog down. He and my mom went out in the garage, closed the door and put the poison on a cloth inside a milk carton, put the milk carton over her snout and she died. :( I still remember how MAD I was that they wouldn't just take her to the vet to have it done like everyfreakingone else did in the whole freaking WORLD.
After her we got a little beagle from a puppy mill pet store. She had worms, coughed up huge big worms......it was so disgusting, but the vet fixed her up. She was a goofy dog -- hard to train and chewed up everything in her path. My parents gave her to a family my dad worked with, and the kids just loved her.
As I read this, I'm starting to understand WHY I absolutely refuse to EVER give up on any dog. No matter what, I won't give up on a dog. Kirby was a challenge.....more on that later.
In my mid teens we got Louise, whom we affectionately named Boobers. I have no idea why she was named Boobers. She was Lorrie's dog really -- because after Lorrie had her ileostomy (ulcerative colitis in the 60's) my dad promised her a puppy when she came home. We got her from the dog pound in Detroit and sneaked her up some back stairs in Henry Ford Hospital -- this was before they had all the security in the hospitals that they have now. Then we got Lorrie out of bed and got her down to the hallway, and she came into the hallway and played with Boobers, who looked kind of like a little lion cub. Boobers was soooooooooooooooooo much fun, smart and sweet. She was a really cool dog. One night my stupid brother Jon came home from work and left the damned gate open, and Boobers ran out and got hit by a car on Inkster Road. It was Good Friday, and I remember we were all looking for her, but we couldn't find her anywhere in the neighborhood. My mom had to go to work. I watched her pull her car over a few houses down the street and come running to the house crying, and I saw something brown by her car. Boobers was lying in the ditch and mom saw her while driving to work. I still remember pounding my fists on my mattress in a total psycho rage that she had died.
Having critters is hard.
After Boobers, we got Gus, then Taffy......by now these were my parents' dogs and not really mine anymore. But I used to babysit Taffy all the time when they traveled.
My first dog that was my very own was Loki. Loki was a pup born from a litter owned by our friends Joe and Lori. They had Deedah. Deedah had pups, and Loki was one of her pups, and he was a very very smart and very mellow and cool dog. We had Loki almost the entire time we lived in our Detroit house and he came to this house with us. Loki died in '94 -- on Good Friday -- from a huge cancerous growth he had in his throat. It was incurable, and there was nothing we could do. He gave us YEARS of great doggie companionship and love though. I will always love Loki to pieces.
After he died, I was going to wait until summer and get a little pup whom I could train. Well....um.....I made it 3 weeks and saw that there was an adoption fair at The Detroit Zoo and went, "just to look" and Stan said, "Well, what do you think you'll name this one?" when I told him that....haha. I remember wandering down the aisles......cats......service dogs.....more cats.....dogs!!! And on the back side of one cage was a little black foot sticking out behind him, just like Loki did.....and around the front, there was a young boy. I asked to see him, took him over to a little grassy knoll where he was ecstatic to be out of his cage and was licking and nibbling on my right ear. That did it.....he had to be my puppy. My mom was with me. We were in my little black sports car. I had to sign a bunch of stuff and pay some money and then get him to the car, but he wouldn't walk on a leash....he was nuts. So I picked him up, upside down in my arms and carried him to the car with his big long puppy legs flopping as I walked and his tongue hanging out. He lay on the back seat quietly all the way home.....we went in the house, and he ran to a little rug in front of the hearth and sat quietly. My mom stayed with him while I went to the pet store and got a new beddie for him and some new stuff. He was good.....nice and quiet. That was maybe the quietest he ever was again until he got old. He was the craziest puppy I ever knew, and he was huge. I was very gentle with him because I had been used to gentle and quiet Loki, but this dog was something else. We would walk to get rid of some energy and he'd drag me along behind him, pulling me into bumpers of parked cars and damn near breaking my kneecap on a couple of occasions......he ate anything he could get. He devoured a couch pillow and pooped out the binding which I had to cut as it came out little by little. He uprooted a huge palm tree plant we had and black potting soil was ground into the white carpet with a nice topping of poop and pee. I never knew about crating a dog back then. Finally we came home from a party, and he was eating the cat's female hormone pills, had eaten a pair of my prescription sunglasses and gnawed on one of my asthma inhalers. He was counter surfing in the kitchen. I was afraid he would turn on the stove when we weren't home.....and we didn't have a room to shut him into. We didn't have a fenced yard -- and besides I wouldn't leave him out there alone anyhow. The next day at the church where I was working as organist, a lady told me about crate training. We had already been in obedience training with a questionable trainer -- who should've told me this stuff but didn't -- and the lady at church even told me how to get him used to the crate. That afternoon I went out and bought a great big crate. That crate was what finally kept him -- and us -- safe. I built up his time, and he got used to it. It became his safe spot. Also once I finally got REALLY REALLY mad at him after he chewed up part of the couch. I was so mad I was just yelling and screaming at him. He ran into his crate.....I remember being so mad I was hitting my fist on the crate and saying bad stuff to him. It was kind of that point which seemed to drive home to him that I was IN CHARGE, and that he was not. The thing about Kirbs was that he was an alpha male....he always knew a better way to do things.....he considered himself smarter than me, and I knew that wasn't going to work. He finally got it that day -- that I was the alpha and he was not. He continued to challenge me his whole life, but he always knew after that that I was in charge. And for 12 years he was SUCH a great dog. We had so much fun together. He was maybe the smartest dog I ever knew. He understood everything I said to him -- he might not agree -- but he understood. Unfortunately, he was probably the result of a bad mix -- maybe inbreeding -- because he was sick his whole life. When he was 3 he began peeing blood. We thought it was a bladder infection, and it did go away, but it turned out that much later he had bladder stones. He went through a lot of troubles with that......a broken cruciate ligament, humongous fatty tumors. And he died at the age of 12 from canine lupus which he fought valiantly to overcome but just could not. He was put down on December 14, 2006, my dear dear sweet ole friend......my bunkie buddy.......my big pal......the smartest dog I ever knew who loved us both unconditionally. I was up all night the night before he died......on his bed hugging him, massaging his back and shoulders to help ease his pain. We wanted to give him every chance to win this, and we probably waited too long, but it was the only way. Even then, driving to the vet, which I swear he understood what was going on, he was frantic. I had to ask Stan to stop and get out and get into the back with Kirbs to hold him and calm him down. He went really really fast.....he was so close to death. I have never EVER been so broken up over a dog. I was in horrible mourning for weeks. I still remember New Year's Eve day in 2006 crying from the time I woke up until after midnight.....all day long. It was sooooooooooooooooooo bad.
By about February that year, I started "just looking" at dogs on Petfinder.com. I wasn't going to get a dog until summer...again....yeah right. I saw lots of sweet dogs, and even though I felt really bad seeing the homeless dogs, I wasn't ready............financially we were still recuperating from the many surgeries of Kirbs and the emotional baggage of worrying and fretting over a sick dog for the past 3 years. And then on February 17th or so.......I saw THE FACE......the cutest, sweetest little face. It was Briggs. His name was listed as Briggs. He was in foster care affiliated with a shelter in Oxford, MI. It said he was almost house trained and was crate trained. I called the foster mom. She called me back.........on Saturday morning of President's weekend (and my brother Pete was here for the weekend), Pete and I drove to Oxford to be at the shelter when they opened. When we got there and said we wanted to see Briggs, they told me to go to the kitchen (the shelter is an old house)......and in came little Briggsie on a leash. He ran over to see me when I called to him, sat down on the rug in front of the sink with me and pushed his little body into me, ears (those million dollar long silky ears) held back close against his head, a look of total fear in his eyes, but he seemed to sense that I was okay, because he was pushed real hard into me. I paid the shelter fee, filled out the paperwork, they gave us an old sheet because he might be car sick. I carried him through the crusty snow to the car, Pete drove and I held Briggsie on my lap and tried to calm him. I still remember saying, "AWWWWWWWW!" in my high girly/mommy voice and Pete laughing and saying "What?" and me saying, "His little feet are so silky and soft!"
Poor little Briggsie. He was removed from "a collector" in very early January, '07. There was a slimeball who had a farm. The neighbors complained because of the smell, and it turned out that he had hundreds of animals he was starving.......I won't go into detail........but I think Briggsie was one of the animals removed from there. He and his momma were removed. His momma had heartworm and was still "intact" and in heat and running around a bunch of males who were "intact" as well......they cured her of her heartworm, and she was adopted out. I wish I had known before she was adopted out because I would've taken her too. But poor little Briggsie was scared to death of lots of stuff. He was scared everytime we opened the fridge or a cupboard. I had to move the doggie dishes to a new spot away from the fridge. He would run under the piano everytime we opened the fridge. We were pretty sure someone kicked him around....threw things at him......and who knows what all he went through as a baby....just a pup....trying to survive among a bunch of mistreated animals. He was a chewy boy. We were told that. I got a bunch of good chewing bones, and corrected him very gently every time he went for the wrong thing. I would put one of his chewy bones in his mouth and say, "chew this." He did. I kept an eye on him constantly. He went with me into the bathroom each morning while I showered. Once we got distracted and lost track of him for awhile. He was 'too quiet' and it turns out he was gnawing on a wool rug we hadn't been using. It was rolled up under one of the guest room beds, and he found it. Stan got really mad. He yelled at Briggs. Briggs just stared at him like he had lost his mind. After Stan got done sputtering and had taken the rug down to the basement, Briggs waited for him to calm down, and then he jumped up on the couch next to Stan and put his head on Stan's thigh.....as if to say, "I'm really sorry I screwed up. I'll never do it again," and Stan admired that. They have been best buds ever since. I have never seen Stan take to a dog like he has to Briggsie, and I have never had a dog in all the time we've been married who wasn't totally MINEMINEMINE. Briggsie is OUR dog. I like it. I can go on trips and Stan and Briggs are real happy together. He's turned into a pretty happy, healthy guy. He likes to hunt bunnies, and he has gotten a few.....yuck. It grosses me out -- but it's in his gene pool.....can't be helped. I do go out before him each morning or evening with a flood light and search the yard now to make sure there aren't any bunnies out there for him to get. He also got into a big tussle with a groundhog this past summer. I think he realized that not all critters can be overcome.....because that groundhog gave him a run for his money. I think Briggsie thought it was going to be a new playmate, but the groundhog never came back.
Anyway, Briggsie has turned into a really happy guy. He likes to play and likes people. He's also a wonderful watch dog. His favorite hobbies are snagging tastes of whatever we are eating and sleeping....he does love his naps.
So that's my dog history.........I also have had cats in my past.......I loved them too. All of them were house cats and lived long long lives......but I don't think I'll have anymore cats. I love them, but I'm a dog person.
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