Duchess

It seems so easy for some people to pump out blogs every day or week. I envy them their skill, but since so many of you have enjoyed my doggy stories, I've a few more to tell. There will be a break when I have guest Bloggers on.

When our children were three and two, I decided it was time for another dog as I now had my energy back. When I told my husband I was ready for another dog, his grey eyes lit up and he asked, “How big of a dog do you want?”

“Oh, about the size of a beagle would be great. We could handle the feed bill for a dog that size.” I should have known he had a dog in mind, but I just assumed he was ready to have a dog as part of our household.

That night he came home with a three-month-old puppy bitch. She was part red bone and blue tick, except she was white with red ticks. Her face and ears were like that of a blood hound, the breed used to develop the red bone, and she was as big as a full grown beagle.

“This is Duchess,” he announced. “I've some food out in the pickup for her. There’s also wood to build a fence around the carport so she can’t escape.”

By this time our children were crowding around wanting to see their new friend. My daughter is the doggy person in the family. Dogs love her. Dogs run to her and she welcomes them in her arms. Duchess, however, seemed to love them both. In fact, Duchess loved everyone. She did take a dislike to all garbage collectors, but whenever she “escaped” from our fence she would run out to meet the dog collector. We bailed her out of jail three times before she was a year old. Of course, all the people there loved her.

My husband brought home chain link fencing and posts and proceeded to fence the entire area around the back of our lot. “It will also keep the dogs out when she comes into heat.”

That was a good thought. A part collie, part retriever (he was a beautiful golden color) climbed over that six foot fence. I watched him in disbelieve and chased him out. He must have returned in the dark of night as two months and three days later, Duchess had a litter of beautiful puppies. She was a gentle mother and even let our daughter inside the doghouse with them. I do not know how many times I drug her out of there trying to convince her that she could get fleas. That, of course, was silly. She knew quite well that if she were going to “get” fleas from our dog, she would have already had them.

Of course, Duchess went with us when we moved to a larger house with an acre just north of Bell Road. Duchess loved that place. She could sleep on the roomy three car carport, under the row of oleander bushes, or she would lie under my husband’s pickup in the summer as it provided shade, a breeze, and a view of the house and yard. She also used that spot as a launching pad. She hated sparrows and cats. For such a slow moving dog she could barrel out from under the truck and catch a sparrow on the fly. I hate to admit it, but she also killed a neighbor’s cat. Fortunately, the neighbor loved Duchess too.
Another reason for Duchess to love our new spot was the grocery story that was one block to the South and to the East of us. The front of the store faced Bell Road and the back toward our street. Duchess would wander over there and as usual, made friends with everyone. The butchers started giving her bones and or scraps. Once she came back dragging part of the bone from the leg of a steer. She really had to work at that one. Oh, I forgot to mention. Duchess could smile. Wackiest thing in the world to watch as her face looked so doleful and she would bring her lips back and smile.

Somehow, we kept her locked up when in heat, but the inevitable happened. There was no fence and Duchess once again was in the family way. They were beautiful pups, but much more like hound dogs. We assumed the father may have had some Labrador in his breeding as one of the pups was coal black except for some white on his throat.

The pups were about six weeks old when I heard the most horrible wailing outside. Part of it was a hound’s bay but the other was a jumble of puppy wailing. I rushed to the carport and opened the door. There was Duchess with her pups ringed around her and her forepaw was holding down a ground squirrel struggling to get away. Duchess looked up at me, but continued her lesson of teaching her puppies to bay.

This time, we weren't able to give away all of the puppies and had to take the excess ones to the pound. That broke my heart. “No more,” I told my husband, and we made the appointment to have Duchess spayed. It was then her tumors started. I don’t know if that had anything to do with that problem, but up until then she had been an extremely healthy dog.

We did keep the biggest pup from that last litter. He was huge, red, and a smooth-haired hound dog, but Brute is another dog.

Duchess lived about three more years when the tumors became too large to control and arthritis crippled her movements. There was no medication for canine arthritis then. I held her while we were at the veterinarian office.