By Loretta Humble/Around the Town
I’ve been telling you about joint care supplement for dogs for years, starting with Barney, the little white dog you can see featured in two murals downtown. I had nothing to do with this; he just somehow got next to two different artists to the extent they just painted him in. Carl and I picked him out at the pound to be a nursing home dog, but he had other ideas. He knew from the beginning he was supposed to go home with us, and wouldn’t have it any other way. We shared joint custody of Barney for 17 years. For most of those years he went to work with me every day, where he snoozed under my desk, only to come out to try to terrorize the mailman. He is buried in Carl’s front yard under a tombstone with his name written in stained glass.
Then came the Jack Russell, Maggie, found on the side of the road near Kaufman about 9 years ago. Again, we meant to find her another home, but just like Barney did, she decided she would stay. She was still a pup, and chewed up everything: all my best shoes, and the wooden arms of my favorite chair. I remember writing about how I finally duct taped plastic jars over them to save what was left of them. I used to call her the Jack Russell Terror. Maggie had been with us for maybe a year when granddaughter Laken who was in college, had to give up her shihtzu puppy. There are few things in this world as cute a shihtzu puppy, and Carl was tickled to adopt him, naming him Bingo.
Well, things rocked on, and Bingo grew up before we knew it. And before we knew it, Bingo and Maggie had mated. Maggie delivered seven puppies right here in this house, on the couch—thankfully, she did let us put a blanket under her. While we certainly did not plan this, we now look back on that time as one our best times in years. We loved those puppies! I remember when I wrote about this, my sister Mary told me I shouldn’t write that the combination of Jack Russell and Shihtzu creates Jack Shitz puppies. Of course I did, and lightening didn’t strike me. Maggie was a great mother and the puppies were remarkable. One sold at a charity auction for a sizable amount, and two went to friends, so we still keep up with them. When it got down to the last one, we just couldn’t let him go. We named him Bruno. That was six years ago.
About four years ago, a starving stray dog came up, and we fed him. Bingo, the ShitzTzu, didn’t like the competition, got in a fight with him, and lost an eye. A month or two later Bingo went missing. Carl found him wandering in the woods with the other eye hanging out. A lot of vet bills later, Bingo recovered to a remarkable extent, so that he often doesn’t seem to miss his eyesight. But, one day a few months ago he took a perilous journey, which amazed all who were involved. You may have read about it: He traveled way down the highway, crossed it, then under a fence, and down a road and into a field, got into a fight or two, before he was rescued by several different kind strangers. Turns out he had an ear infection which got his radar off. But he recovered and is sassy as ever.
The latest and very sad chapter of this story is that we lost Maggie last week. She appeared at the door shivering from the cold rain, and no matter how we dried her and wrapped her up, she couldn’t stop shivering. The next day she was dead. The vet told us she died of diabetes. We had no idea. She was a little fat, but she did enjoy her food, and we didn’t try very hard to make her diet.
Maggie was the matriarch. She kept the others in line, sometimes with a small nip if they didn’t get the message soon enough. So far, I think they think she is off visiting, as she sometimes did. But I’m pretty sure I saw Bingo searching for her yesterday.
We buried her here out in front of the house. The clay is very hard there. Carl dug with a shovel, and when he had to rest, I sat on the ground and dug with a smaller shovel. It was a joint effort, because Maggie was a jointly loved dog. We put rocks on the grave for now, and we are trying to decide on something pretty to plant there that we could look at and smile when we remember of Maggie.
