To have a title like “The Wisdom of My Dog” means there must have been a dog somewhere, sometime. The smartest dogs I’ve known are my two Australian Shepherds. First was Mike who was definitely a manly man’s dog. Mike chose to live with us for over 10 years but unfortunately suffered from congestive heart failure in the end. My husband wrote a wonderful tribute to him titled “Mike Dunphy Oct 1997 – Nov 19, 2008” Mike’s philosophy on life was simple — eat, sleep and herd deer. But Mike wasn’t that simple either — he was fiercely devoted to his family and showed his emotions willingly. There was a lot to learn from this great guy.
As much as I’d like to say that Mike’s time with us was absolutely perfect from beginning to end, that would be fibbing just a little. We found Mike through ARPH, a breed specific rescue organization. Mike came to us as an overweight, beligerent, ill-behaved, strong-willed dog of 14 months. We were warned that he would need a lot of work and training to become a proper member of the family. Jim and I felt up to the task and I can honestly say the time spent was worth it. With proper love, training and guidance, Mike became that perfect companion — he knew what was expected of him and his command of language was excellent. Mike’s passing was devastating to the entire family but most especially my husband as the two bonded in a way that is difficult to put into words and difficult to replace.
We’re a dog family so we couldn’t go long without one in the house — enter Dev or the “Earl of Devonshire”. I found Dev on the Petfinder website and immediately fell in love with his pictures. Even though I had promised Jim we would wait until Spring to get another dog, I just couldn’t get this guy out of my mind. The house felt lonely without a dog around lying under foot, begging for food, and just being there. Dev comes from a rescue group in Idaho who had “sprung” him from the local dog pound. That’s right – Idaho! — anyway I filled out an application for Dev, Jim was interviewed on the phone for quite a while and then we found out that we were approved to adopt Dev. The only problem was that we’d have to drive to Idaho to meet Dev and see if it was a match. So after about 20 minutes deliberation we decided to make the mad dash the next morning across the border to get a dog. This was a hard trip of about 1000 miles through the mountains in winter. The girls were amazing for the entire trip of about 36 hours and didn’t complain once (it helped that they understood we were going to get a dog). Dev is a black-tri Australian Shepherd like Mike but is smaller and quite a bit more nimble. Dev’s philosophy? I’m not sure I’ve figured it out yet though he does love chasing a tennis ball and doing agility (part of which involves chasing a tennis ball…..) I’ll update this post as I learn more.
