The Next Pet Is Not a Cat

This is a continuation of My First Pet and My Second Pet...

One lovely fall day, my wife and daughter and I went hiking. We had been without Twinkie for only a short time, a few weeks, perhaps. A woman was approaching with her two daughters and dog. My wife was attracted to their dog, a calm, friendly Golden Retriever. So we stopped and talked to the woman and asked about her dog. She told us that the dog came from a nearby breeder who just happened to have another litter available. She gave us her number, and then we called to get the name and number of the breeder.

The breeder had only one dog left from a litter of eight. We visited and found a huge puppy with enormous paws. He felt heavy in my arms, and he shivered. His breath stank of skunk. We decided to make a home for him, our first dog.

He grew very quickly, like a real-life Clifford. At first, he couldn't walk the entire neighborhood circuit, so I'd pick him up and carry him after 2/3 of the way. He upset my wife a few times, once knocking over a potted plant and ripping it out of the dirt, another time eating some wild creature's poop and vomiting on the floor, plus all the chewed up chair legs. He'd pee on the floor when visitors came over.

But he settled down as he continued to get bigger. He started to have problems with his left front leg. Then one day he couldn't get up without help from us. We managed to lift him into the car and get him to the vet who diagnosed Lyme disease. He got better quickly with the antibiotic.

A pack animal, he always wanted to sleep in our room. But my wife started to have breathing problems. She visited an allergist for the first time. He tested her and set her up with asthma medicines and a nebulizer. He said she was allergic to dog dander. The best thing to do was to give up the dog. We actually contacted one of our neighbors who recently lost one of her Goldens. But we never went through with it.

After my wife's hospitalization for Myelitis, she started to go to a naturopathic doctor who put her on supplements to support the thyroid and adrenal glands. Her allergy symptoms vanished. Imagine giving up the dog when a simple remedy solved the problem!

One day in May the dog really hurt himself, charging at something at the bottom of a hill. He hurt himself so bad he couldn't put weight on that paw. He hyperflexed the carpus joint and damaged the tendon. He needed a splint and a diet. He got both. Plus acupuncture, chiropractic manipulation, glucosmine and Prolotherapy.

He's seven years old, now. He lost about 25 pounds. He still walks with a slight limp, and he wears a bandage to support the joint. Some gray is starting to show around the muzzle. He can't go for long walks without the limp becoming pronounced. But he will not hesitate to charge at invaders to our property. Crows, deer, bunnies -- no matter how fierce, he will go after it. But he's meek with our cats.

And those cats are the subject of another post.