‘Go Get Him, He Is a Special Dog’

For my daughter’s 15^th birthday, she begged for a dog. Not just any dog; she had her heart set on a large male dog, black, that she wanted to name ‘Buddy’. She pestered me for weeks, but I would not budge from my original ‘No!’

We lived, at that time, with someone who took in every stray and those injured on the interstate. There were already 14 dogs on the premises, besides about two dozen cats, and a horse. All my money was poured into animals that weren’t even mine. They ate better than we did.

I had nothing against dogs; I was raised around animals of all sorts on a small farm. However, I could not justify feeding another animal. Finally, after several weeks of being badgered, I gave in and let Rachel ‘look’ for a dog in the Iwanna paper. I fully expected her to find nothing, given the boundaries she had given herself. I was wrong. The second ad held all the promise of her wishes being fulfilled.

“Momma, LOOK…it’s a male Lab-mix puppy, just six weeks old, black, and HE’S ALREADY NAMED BUDDY!” My heart sank…..what was I going to do now? I told Rachel I would ‘think about it.’ That night, when I went to bed, I prayed a sincere prayer to the Lord. ‘What do I do?…. I don’t want to disappoint Rachel again, and I can’t afford to feed another dog! Help!’ I fell into a troubled sleep, weighing the pros and cons in my head. Sometime during the night, the Lord woke me up with the words ‘Go get him, he is a special dog’ spoken audibly into my right ear.

The next morning, a Tuesday, I told Rachel we would make a call later in the day, and inquire about the puppy. She was ecstatic! I was self-employed, and traveled about an hour to work, building rock walls and gardens, and general landscaping. Near lunchtime, I made a call and talked to a really nice Christian lady who told me the dog’s story.

She , her husband, and daughter, had been to Smiley’s Flea Market the weekend before. It had been her daughter’s ninth birthday, and as they walked along, she saw a man selling puppies for $50 each. She ran up, as children do, wanting to pet them. It turned out that the parents of the puppies were both registered bird dogs, as wells as show dogs in their sport, owned by someone locally. An accidental breeding had taken place, and the puppies were half Labrador Retriever and half Golden Retriever.

They left the man selling the puppies, and continued to walk around the flea market. When they returned to their starting point, the man only had one puppy left, after beginning with five. He called them over, and told the parents that he would give the daughter the last puppy-Buddy-for her birthday. So, they brought him home that Sunday.

When I asked the reason she was getting rid of him after having him for only a week, she explained that she had nine cats, and that Buddy terrorized them by chasing them constantly. Her old tom cat had left the second day, and had not returned. She emphasized that she wanted him to go to a good home, but that her cats took priority. She and the daughter had compromised , and result was that Buddy would have to go, in favor of receiving a new kitten. I made arrangements to go the following Thursday.

The puppy that greeted us was all feet and ears, but Rachel picked him up and did not put him down until she put him in our SUV. All the woman asked for was the $20 that she had spent on a bag of dog food. Rachel gladly paid her, and we set out on the two hour drive back to work. That first day, he began to show me what a special dog he was.

I was cutting some overhanging branches from a maple tree from a client’s driveway using spring-operated loppers on a pole. The branch was almost out of reach, even with the full extension of the saw. I needed to get a better grip on the rope to pull the blade to make the cut. My girls were behind the house weeding a flower bed, and did not hear me call them. However, Buddy was sitting just a few feet away from me, watching every move I made with pricked ears and his head turned to the side. Just for a laugh, I called him to me, and put the knot at the end of the rope in his mouth, telling him to ‘hold it.’ As if he understood exactly what I needed, he closed his mouth on the knot, set back on his haunches, keeping the tension on the blade while I got a better grip. He did this twice for me, until I got the branch cut, then I patted him on the head, telling him what a good dog he was. He was such a cute little fellow, sitting there , looking back at me. He was about the size of a large house cat, weighing 13 pounds. But, he grew fast!

 

We got Buddy a month and a half before Rachel’s birthday, and by time it actually rolled around, she had found her a boy to have a crush on, and Buddy was forgotten. He went to work with me everyday, and hardly left my side. As my life in the relationship I was in spun out of control, he developed a protective toward me.

If I was in the bathroom too long, he would come and nose the door open, with a ‘just checking’ look on his face, then back away. If there were time I had to leave him at home, he would be overly excited when I came home, whining and circling around me endlessly. Of course, he reacted the same way if I had just walked out to the mailbox!

In November, 2006, I got out of the shower-my feet still a bit too wet-and fell on the tile floor. The first thing that hit was the back of my head. All the lights went out on impact, but I was still conscious. Buddy was the only other ‘person’ in the house, and he circled me continuously, whining, until I was able to figure out where ‘up’ was. I went to the emergency room, where they gave me five staples to close the gaping hole in my head, and told me I had a concussion. (I lost almost all of my taste and smell capabilities because of the accident, but thankfully, seven years later, I have regained about 95% of my taste, and about 25% of my smell!)

As the years passed by, I saw him train a horse to not be afraid of, or violent toward, small dogs. One summer, as a momma cat was having kittens under a camper cover for a pick-up truck, Buddy crawled in with her, inspecting each newborn kitten as it came out, and keeping the other curious cats away by putting his front paws between the kittens and the trespassing cat. If they tried to get beyond that barrier, he would inch closer, and put his body in their path.

The summer he was two years old, I took him with me to visit some cousins that lived about an hour away. After being there a little while, she wanted to go see another cousin that had just received a two-month old baby, born addicted to drugs.

My cousin, Keitha, along with her husband, has committed their life to helping babies born this way by being a foster parents. She had had Tavares two days, and he was just two months old. When we got there, I asked Keitha if I could bring Buddy inside, since I didn’t bring a leash, and he was completely house- and car- broke. She said yes, and Buddy came in and circled the car seat sitting in the floor in front of the sofa.

He had never been around a baby before, especially a newborn, but he was curious. He laid down beside the sleeping baby, taking up a vigil that I believe was his instinctive nature. A few times when the baby would wake up and cry, he would raise his head, looking in curiously. Keitha would gently rock him for a few seconds, until he fell back asleep, and then Buddy would settle back down, resting his head on his front paws. We were there about three hours, and he never moved from that spot until it was time to leave.

When we gave up our house, back in 2010, I had to give Buddy up, knowing we could not take him with us into an uncertain future. I prayed over who to give Buddy to; giving him up was very much like giving up one my own children. A neighbor who helped us disassemble our house had an eleven year old boy, Wade. He thought Buddy was THE dog! Whenever they came over, Buddy followed him every step he made. When our living room furniture was gone, we all sat on the floor. Wade would sit cross-legged, and Buddy would lay down, putting his head in Wade’s lap. It was like watching a modern version of Timmy and Lassie.

So, that is where Buddy is now. I’ve not seen him in two and a half years. But I still miss him terribly. I dream of him often, and there are times that I wish I could just go get him back, but I know that is impossible right now. Some might think I am overreacting, that I would love a dog that much, but God was right-he IS a special dog, and saw me through many hard times.

The above picture is one of my favorites of Buddy. He loves the snow, and our last winter in North Carolina, he had plenty of it to play in! It is ironic that his parents were bird dogs, because I tried many times to ‘sic’ him on the herons when I lived near the Tuckasegee River. He was not interested. Oh, and by the way, in all those years around the dozens  of  cats,  he never  chased a one. But, he has a great affinity for rocks, and usually would bring one home every time we went on outdoor excursions!