A Tail of Two Dogs … the best of times

As most of my readers know, I have the best dogs … in the world. My older dog Zuckey passed away this last spring after spending several years as an “elderly” dog. She was blind and forgetful. Those are two infirmities that should not appear together. As long as I didn’t move the furniture, she did pretty well, but as she headed into her fifteenth year, she was easily confused. Fifteen in dog years is about like a hundred in human years, and I certainly understood her confusion. I get confused about where things are, too. Although losing a pet is terrible; she had lived a good life, and the last couple of years had been hard on her.

Dixie, my black twenty-five-pound Tennessee feist/dachshund/lab mix, is doing well. (I had her DNA checked, so I know her family background.) She was a bit lost without Zuckey until Brandy came to stay with us for a while. Brandy’s “daddy” is staying here, and of course, she is too. For the last twenty years, I’ve only had small dogs. However, Brandy weighs about seventy pounds, leaves a white cloud of dog hair everywhere, and is a Dalmatian/Lab mix. She is a sweet dog who is afraid of everything … except Dixie.

The two dogs have gotten along really well, but they were trained differently. Dixie came to me with certain skills. I did not have to teach her to sit, get back, fetch, or roll over. Someone who had to give her up to the shelter had already trained her. At my house, she learned to get Kleenexes out of the trash, sleep on furniture, and beg for food at the table. She was a fast learner and was already on this downward spiral when Brandy came to live with us.

Brandy had also spent some time in juvenile detention. Through no fault of her own, she’d wound up at the shelter twice. The first adopter treated her rather badly, and the animal control lady brought her back to the shelter where my friend found her. She doesn’t sit on command, doesn’t wait patiently while you go through the door first, and insists on barking loudly when someone comes to the door. She does sleep nicely on the floor by my bed, snuggles mightily, and chases squirrels. Since she came to my house, she has learned to retrieve candy wrappers from the trash and shred them, remove the eyeballs from stuffed animals, and beg for food at the table.

Both dogs are extremely smart. Of course, I think my dog is the smartest, and my friend thinks that Dixie has led Brandy down the path to destruction. The thing is that they have become quite a team. Color doesn’t matter to them. Brandy doesn’t discriminate against Dixie even though she is black and has pointy ears. Neither does Dixie lord it over Brandy because Dixie is allowed to sleep on the bed, nor does Dixie bring up the fact that Brandy is a little clumsy and hasn’t caught a squirrel since she got here.

The two dogs have us pretty well trained. We know that the last bite of dinner should be shared equally between the two of them (regardless of size). They know that when we go to the car, they are to get in the back seat and stay there. They know that the stuffed animals, though blind, are up for grabs and are a source of competition for their late evening romps. Dixie is fast. Brandy is big. My friend and I have learned to stay out of the way.