My relationship with dogs started off poorly. I loved my puppy, Skippy, in kindergarten, but he disappeared when our fence was taken down for new construction.
Then I was counseled by a neighbor, wizened by her extra years of experience and seniority, who took me under her wing. “You mistreated him,” she said.“That’s why he ran away.” She was seven years old.
I took this hard and didn’t warm to dogs again,especially after being bitten by one on my paper route. They were noisy, scary and impossible to control.
But when I met Pickett, I noticed that she had a Dalmatian. If you wanted her, the dog was part of the deal, I learned. Pretty though Nina was, she seemed awfully hyperactive. I got along well with the neighbors until Pickett moved in. “Get that dog off our property!” I kept hearing.
Next there was Brandy, whom she borrowed from a friend. Brandy showed no loyalty to us and would run off with strangers on our walks. Then came Tara, who became blind, deaf and incontinent in old age. Then Bonnie, who seemed to provoke dogfights in the local dog park.
Would I ever be free of this? We had Sara, who was utterly fascinated with birds when we went there to adopt her in Honduras. As she grew up, she kept bringing home stray dogs and I kept making her find owners. I warned her future husband, Lance, about this, but he was more tolerant than I was.
I kept telling my family that I didn’t like dogs, but they knew I was an old softie, and they talked me into getting a second.
I was getting accustomed to Niko, a poodle, but he tended to eat inanimate objects like sponges and hearing aids, and he died in old age after eating a sock.
The other poodle, India, used to run the farm with Niko, but she must have been heartbroken when he died. Now she won’t go anywhere without us. And she keeps coaxing me to go for a walk with her. Well, I am starting to enjoy it!
Then Sara took her love of dogs a notch higher and became a professional dog groomer. In the year she lived at Oak Grove with her family, she ran the business in the house next door, with dogs arriving by car every hour.
But just before she and her kids left to join her husband in Blacksburg, she begged me to keep one of her dogs, Ethos, a combination Doberman and coon hound. We agreed.
Ethos was a rescue dog who did not do well in apartments and small houses. He had gotten Sara and Lance into trouble twice by tearing up basements and howling at night when they lived in West Virginia.
At Oak Grove, he runs the 400 acres whenever he wants, he won’t come when he is called, and he eats absolutely anything. He’s my kind of dog!
He loves bed and breakfast guests, and he makes them pet him until they push him away.
After all of these years avoiding dogs, have I changed? I am in love with this dog! He knows the land here better than we do from his daily inspections. He belongs here as much as we do!
(Continued next week)
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