No, I’m not talking about Jesse when he forgets to shave, though he does tend to let himself get pretty furry before he does. Even Benjamin, of late, has begun to sport a little fuzz on his upper lip. Anyway… when I talk about my “furry children”, I am referring to our dogs.
If you had asked me before Ken died if I would ever have three dogs at the same time, I would have called you CRAZY! But here I sit, loving and taking care of three of the silliest dogs on God’s green earth.
Our oldest dog is “Dots”. He got that name from Jesse, who with the perfect logic of his Aspergian mind, took one look and said, “He has dots all over him. We should call him Dots.” He is, we think, a Rat Terrier, white with black spots (or black with white spots, depending on how you look at it). I say we think he is a rat terrier because he was a shelter rescue and we don’t really know for sure. He certainly looks like a rat terrier.
Dots is the only one of our pups that I actually went out purposely to adopt. It was several months after Ken had been diagnosed with cancer. I wanted something that would take the boys’ minds off of all of the grimness that comes when dealing with a terminal illness. When I told Ken I wanted to get them a dog, I don’t think he really thought I was serious. I don’t think he could imagine that I would want one more thing in that house that needed to be taken care of. Now that I think back on it, it was kind of nuts. I guess I can always plead temporary insanity.
I had heard on the radio that one of the pet stores in Chattanooga was having a pet adoption fair that Sunday afternoon, so I casually suggested we go after church and “have a look”. When we got there, most of the dogs they had were HUGE. I’m talking, big old wolf-hound looking dogs. I knew I didn’t want a puppy because I didn’t want to have to go through the “chewing stage” again. The last puppy we had chewed everything in the house, including the linoleum off of our bathroom floor. I am still not sure how he managed to pull it up in the first place to get his teeth on it. Anyway, I was about to walk out when I saw this sad looking black and white dog looking at me. He had his head down and the look in his eyes said, “I’m not going to get up and wag my tail at you because it wouldn’t do any good…nobody wants me.” I went over and put my fingers through the bars of his kennel and scratched his head. He licked my fingers and I knew he was our dog. We took him home, much to the boys’ delight. Ken just shook his head.
Now Ken had never liked the idea of having a dog in the house. In fact, when we were engaged, he tried to talk me into making my dog, Clarissa, into an outdoor dog. I told him that if he intended for me to live in the same house as him, then Clarissa would have to live there too. He didn’t like it, but I guess true love won out, because he relented and allowed her to live in the house. But he would absolutely NEVER allow her to get up on any of the furniture. I figured it would be the same with Dots. So you can imagine my surprise when I came in one day and found Dots curled up IN KEN’S LAP. That dog not only was a comfort and distraction for Jesse and Benjamin, he became a real comfort to Ken as well.
I think Dots knew that Ken was going to die. Toward the end, he stayed close to Ken wherever he went. The morning Ken died, I was on the foot of our bed (his hospital bed was pushed up against the end of the bed) holding his hand. Dots was laying beside me, watching Ken. The house was absolutely full of people. Usually Dots would have been having a fit, barking at everybody for invading his territory. But strangely, he just laid there beside me and never took his eyes off of Ken. Then, just as Ken was breathing his last labored breaths, Dots stood up and moaned. I believe he knew that Ken was leaving. It was the eeriest thing I’ve ever seen. In the weeks following Ken’s death, poor Dots would roam the house whining, looking for Ken. He would go from room to room and come look at me and whine, as if to say, “Where is he?” “I know, Buddy”, I would say, “I miss him too”. Then I would bury my face in Dots’ fur and we would cry together. Dots has been a comfort to all of us.
Hmmmm…I spent more time on Dots than I realized. I’ll talk about the other two next post.
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