A Promise Is A Promise:  Lady and Other Dogs I Have Known

I know.  I told you I wouldn’t inundate you with cute pictures and stories about Lady Patricia, my almost five-year-old, white miniature schnauzer, so just consider this an update.  She does some funny little things, this girl.

Lady has found her voice.  For more than a month, she made no sound, at all.  Then, one day (about a month after she came to live with me), one of my Keith’s and I were talking in a part of the house away from where she was.  Her safe space is in her bed on the loveseat in the TV room – or just out of the bed on the loveseat.  When she heard our voices, she barked – as though she was telling me that someone strange was in the house.  That was the first time, ever, that she made any sound.  Since then, she has also started barking when the doorbell rings – either my doorbell or a doorbell on the TV.  I think Katie, our border collie friend, taught her that.

She will also bark when she and I are not in the same room for any length of time.  And, I do mean BARK!  I wonder if she is afraid that I’ve gone away and am not coming back, because when I go back to the room where she is, she stops barking.  And, gives me a look that may say, “Look.  I’m not doing anything wrong – am I?”

She uses that look often.  I think the first time she I saw it, she had a sock – one of my socks – and was chewing at it.  I had a basket of clothing on the bed waiting to be put away.  While I was dressing, sitting on the bed putting on my shoes, I felt her beside me.  Checking to see what was happening, I realized that she had taken one of my socks out of the basket and was chewing it.  Of course, I took it from her, telling her that she couldn’t have MY socks, and I put the sock back in the basket.  She promptly took it out of the basket and started chewing it again.  This dog, at four years of age, had never seen a sock before.  She spent her life in a crate and outside on the concrete.  No socks.  How did she know that socks might be for chewing?

She is death on pieces of paper that she finds on the floor.  Little pieces of paper.  Big pieces of paper.  She really likes to be in whatever room I’m in, so she is often in the room where I use the computer and paper.  When I hear crunching¸ it is Lady chewing and crunching paper that she has found on the floor.  Or, crunching paper that she has taken out of a box.  Again, in her four years of life, when did she become familiar with pieces of paper to be chewed?  I’m guessing that “the dog ate my homework” may not be far from the truth!

Lady is really my dog.  The first ever dog that was mine.  Every other dog that Larry and I had living with us (most, but not all, schnauzers) were mine – until Larry put his hand on the dog.  Then, I lost the dog.  Coda came to live with us when Daughter #1 and her roommate came across a dog that two teenage boys were harming by dunking it in the water of a ditch.  The roommate took the dog home to their apartment, which of course was now allowed by their apartment building rules.  So, she came to live at our house – “just until we find a home for her, Mom.”  A week later, she was still at our house, no visible new home in sight, and without a name.  Larry, Daughter #1, and I were at breakfast on Sunday morning; Larry made one of his “famous” statements – “I want to know what you are going to do with this dog.”  I asked if he wanted to know, right then, in the middle of Village Inn Restaurant.  He answered, “Yes.”  Fine, was my response.  She is mine.

That was not the response he’d expected, but I went on to say that her name would be Coda – the end of the “found” dogs – like the end of a musical phrase.  She wasn’t, of course … the end of the found dogs, but it worked for that moment.  She was my dog with a name.  Until the following Monday.  I was taking classes in Greeley at the University of Northern Colorado.  I drove home from my Monday class, arriving about 10 pm.  Coda was sitting on Larry’s lap in the TV room.  I asked him why he had her on his lap.  His reply:  “If I don’t hold her, she chews my shoestrings.”  “Just give her a smack when she does that,” I told him.  “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he told me.  And, I had lost my dog.

Our last dog before Lady was Libby.  She had developed a lymphoma and was seeing her vet in Strasburg, CO.  When I was the school superintendent in Agate, CO, some one-half hour or so away from Strasburg, I got to know the vets at the Hanks Veterinarian Clinic.  Back at my home in the Denver area and when Libby was having treatment for the lymphoma (chemo), Larry and I would drive to Strasburg, have dinner with friends from Agate, pick her up after treatment, and drive home to Englewood.  It was at the same time that Larry also had treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (caused by his work in the uranium industry while in college).  They were “best buds” and had lots of talks about it, I think.  Interestingly, Libby lost her hair and looked like a doberman pinscher, rather than the schnauzer that she was.  Larry did not lose his hair.  See the photograph

Lady learned about stairs when she and I (and Daughter #1) were in Wisconsin while Daughter #3 had knee replacement surgery.  Three steps separated the kitchen from the family room.  Uma their resident dog taught Lady to climb and descend those steps.  Apparently, they were not as terrifying to her as the twelve steps seemed to be leading to my basement.  When we came home, I encouraged her to go to the basement with me and back up the stairs when my basement duties were finished.  It only took a couple of tries for her to get the idea that if she wanted to be in the same room as I, she would have to learn to descend and climb those stairs.  Today, when I get to the bottom of the twelve steps that separate my basement from the first floor, it still takes her a while to decide to go to the basement.  But, she does.  After I turn to her and say, “Are you coming or not?”

Lady sleeps on the bed with me, just like all of our other dogs have done.  Nights are starting to become cool; I think she is getting cold; so, I cover her with the corner of the “dog sheet” that I keep on the bed.  She doesn’t budge from being covered, so I know that it is the right thing to do – even though it is still early September.

When our friend dog Katie comes to visit, Lady is a pest.  She is jealous.  She jumps on Katie, takes away the rawhide bones, and, in general, makes a nuisance of herself.  And, Katie just seems to realize this “pest” is to be tolerated.

I love having the dogs.  They seem to really like each other.

The Cranky Crone

If you have thoughtful feedback or questions, please let me know with a comment below.