Sincerely Sire - February 2006
The Last Dog
We just bought the cutest
little Boston Terrier puppy—pictured above—on the face of the earth. I was
holding her the other day
Until we got Frankie Finnegan
Sire, Finn for short, we had been without a dog for almost five years, our
longest stretch ever without a doggie.
I bought Finn “for Roe” one
night while she was away on a trip to
Did I say pooper? Yeah,
that’s about all she does, it’s fantastic. All over the
place. We had to roll up the carpet and take it out of our family room.
This dog is truly amazing. We put a doggie door in the wall right after we got
her about a month ago, and she is finally, thank goodness, starting to figure
it out. I had forgotten what a challenge it is to housetrain the little
critters.
She weighed less than a
pound when I got her, but now, I would guess, she has at least doubled in
weight. She eats a lot indeed, but she likes to keep an eye on me at the same
time, so she grabs a mouthful of nibbles and drops them on the floor directly in
front of me and chews, all the while watching me to make sure I don’t move a muscle.
Cracks me up.
And when she wants to play,
I better be ready. If I’m sitting on the couch and she’s in the mood to fool
around, she just starts barking and dive-bombing at me with jaws flapping wide
open. She goes for a mouthful of flesh, doesn’t matter where it is on my body. I
feel like I’m being slowly tenderized.
And she, of course, has already
become Roe’s shadow, following her all over the house. She can even make it up the
stairs now, and up onto the couch, but down from neither, which can be frustrating
for her at times, as was the case the other night. She had found a way out of her
homemade pen area that we constructed around the doggie door by crawling up
onto the sofa. But she couldn’t get down from the sofa which she wanted to do very
badly so she could bounce up the stairs and jump into our bed which she gets to
do every morning. But she couldn’t get off that darn
Speaking of scary, let me
tell you about something else that happened about a week ago just a little past
midnight.…Roe and I were sound asleep when we were both awakened by something pawing, thumping at our bed. We were
both jolted to consciousness by this sound. But no problem—we figured Finn had
gotten out of her pen again and wanted to get up on the bed. This pawing
scratching sound was followed by the pitter patter of little feet scampering
across the floor and down the hall. We both clearly heard this as well.
So, as usual, I turned on
the light, got up, grumbled something about how wonderful it was to have a dog
again, and told Roe I would put Finn back in her pen. But as I stood up, there
was no Finn. This was unusual because during the past few weeks when Finn had
gotten out she had always stayed at the edge of our bed until we lifted her up,
but not tonight. Kind of freaked me out a little, but I bravely forged ahead to
find our little doggie. I expected to see her in the hall outside our bedroom since
I knew she couldn’t get down the stairs and we had closed the doors to all the
other rooms, but still no Finn. Hum, this was strange. What/who had been in our
bedroom? Was she stuck on the stairs? Nope. So, I go downstairs and into the
family room but still no Finn. Where in the heck could she be? And then, finally,
I look over at the last place I expect to see her—in her pen—and there she was
looking me straight in the eye as if to say, “What in the world are you doing
up at this time of night?”
I was perplexed to say the
least as I went back upstairs to bed scratching my head trying to figure out
what had happened. Had I imagined the pawing at the bed and the pitter patter
of little feet? I suppose I could have been dreaming, but what are the odds of
both Roe and I having the same dream at precisely the same moment? Not likely. And
if Finn had come up the stairs, how had she gotten back down the stairs? She
couldn’t go downstairs. And then back into her pen so quickly? Why would she go
back into her pen anyway? It didn’t make any sense.
And then I remember another
dog named Callie, our previous Boston terrier that we had loved so very much
and who we lost to a sudden and mysterious illness when she was only five years
old in 2001…Could it be? Had our dear Callie been back for a midnight visit? Maybe just a little jealous? Hey, don’t forget about me
guys…Don’t forget about me! …
Not a chance Callie. Never. We finally got another Boston terrier but there will
never be another Callie.
E-mail Me Back to Archives Back to Home Page