OUR DOGS, PAST & PRESENT
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I've had many dogs over the last five decades, but Lori has only had a couple. In 1998 we began talking about getting a dog, as I terribly missed having one around. The wife wanted Fifi, I wanted Godzilla. We had finally compromised after months of debate and had started thinking maybe a Shiba Inu. Funny how things never seem to turn out the way you planned, no matter how long you plan for them.
We were living on an acreage, but in a small apartment above a dog boarding kennel owned by a friend. The owner had about eight dogs, and there were anywhere from a dozen to over eighty dogs living below us on any given day. We had the necessary infrastructure, so we were ready. Well, it happened that another friend fell upon some very difficult times, and asked if I would consider taking his 20 month old male Rottweiler, as he wanted the dog to end up in a good home with someone who really liked the dog. That was me. I thought Spike was the next best thing to owning a bear.
Spike already weighed 125 lbs. when we got him, and most of his life he weighed around 130 lbs. until his last couple of years, when he got up to 140 pounds of pure goofy. Unfortunetly, Spike died of bone cancer in 2007. To this day, my wife and I still refer to him as "The Best Dog That Ever Lived" and we had a terrible time dealing with the loss of our buddy. Spike had turned into quite the mama's boy, and Lori took his loss very hard.
When Spike was around 3 years old, the Mastiff Rescue folks brought a female English Mastiff in to be boarded for a few days while they found her a permanent home. We fell instantly in love with this gigantic, beautiful dog. She is a black over fawn brindle, and about the sweetest dog you'll ever meet. She currently weighs in at 206 lbs. and is 30 inches at the shoulder. Sadie was the shining light in our lives that made it possible to still want dogs after losing Spike. She was quite depressed, herself, so we decided not to mess around with the debating, and got another dog. Sadie is a big daddy's girl, and follows me everywhere, howling pitifully if I even go outside to check the mail.
In the spring of 2008 we got Lucky, who was 5 months old at the time, from the Adopt-a-Pet shelter. He's an absolutely charming and handsome little Catahoula Leopard Dog with the most amazing blue eyes. He had been mistreated and was thrown out of a moving vehicle as a way of getting rid of him. Luckily, he survived this and healed up very quickly. He hadn't broken any bones, but had some nasty road rash injuries. We again knew he was the right dog, on first sight of him.
Now, Sadie is roughly the size of a moose, but very gentle by nature. She's also very jealous. She takes no smack talk from other dogs, and even Spike knew better than to piss her off. He was always the perfect gentleman with her, and if she decided he didn't eat fast enough to suit her, she just pushed him out of the way and ate his food, too. Amazingly, he never gave her a hard time about it. But he was a Rottweiler, and he wouldn't give up a soup bone quite so willingly. Sadie knew when he wasn't playing around, and I think she sensed the very real danger of a seriously not kidding Rottie. I play rough with the dogs, and believe me when I tell you that the jaw power of a Rottie is something to respect.
Sadie and Spike had been buddies, but we weren't sure how she would react to the new puppy. He only weighed 47 lbs. when we brought him home, approximately three bites for a Mastiff. For three days, she turned her nose up at him and would have nothing to do with him. I told the wife that Lucky is a charmer and he'd win her over. On about the fourth day they were playing together all the time, and although Sadie is over nine years old (very old for her breed) she absolutely adores the puppy, now. We can't believe how tolerant she is with him. He has his big teeth, now, and he tries to drag her huge ass around by an ear, a foot or any loose hide he can latch on to. Mastiffs have plenty of "extra dog" to get ahold of. Sadie never complains. When she's had enough and is wore out, she gives him the bear business and he's plenty smart enough to honor the warning.
Watching this enormous striped dog playing with the little blue-eyed, spotted crackhead puppy is an absolute riot. When they play in the yard, people actually stop their cars to watch. It's a blast to watch them with their goofy antics, and never fails to make me laugh. How they can play so rough and neither of them ever yelp is beyond me. Sadie has come out of her depression and is back to her old, constantly wagging self.
The pictures that follow are of Sadie and Lucky playing in the yard in June of 2008 and are intersparsed with some thoughts, opinions and anecdotes about dogs. We offer them up in the hopes that people will learn something other than the complete hogwash and media bullshit about various breeds of dogs that you see on the news these days.