We are getting more creative about how to help Greta work out her endless energy. She likes her bike rides but she really loves low tide under the bridge. There aren’t many places with stretches long enough for her to reach her top speed, but this is one of them. All sorts of sea creatures are stranded on the sand at low tide and she has sampled every single one of them. They inevitably bite, pinch, sting, or half choke her as she tries to swallow them whole. She yelps but always goes back for more. Then she drinks enough sea water to throw up at least once within the next few hours. What can I say? She may not have been the brightest pup in her litter, but she was probably the most adventurous.
Despite the similarities in this picture, Greta could not be more different than her best friend, Raven. Raven is prissy. She doesn’t like to get wet, prances when she runs, and has preferences on everything from food to bedding. Greta can be found soaking wet, tongue lolling, sprawled out on any surface that might help her keep cool. If Raven is a princess, Greta is a peasant. She isn’t particular about eating, wolfing down her food in three or four bites, and she usually transports half her water bowl about ten feet before opening her mouth and drooling it in a huge puddle on the floor. She is messy. She also might be a bit of a dummy. She has to relearn Raven’s doggy door every time we visit and always smacks into their sliding glass door, often at full tilt, at least twice in a weekend.
Our friends, whose baby is Raven, have thought about getting another Dobie. Having Greta visit has given them pause. Her rough and tumble behavior is quite opposite of the quiet presence that is Raven. For us, Greta fits right in with our kids. My oldest son has enough willful difficulty for three kids. Could I handle another high-strung dependent? Just like our friends we have been given pause about getting another canine companion. Because dogs are like kids in personality, you never know what you’re gonna get.
What happens when a road trip lands two kids and a puppy in the back seat of a small SUV? Questions like:
“Can you tell Greta to stop licking my face?”
“Is Adam supposed to be touching Greta where she poops?”
“Mom! Can you move Greta’s rump out of my face?”
In other words, enough chaos to relocate our Dobie to the third row of the car on the trip home. Poor Greta just wanted to look out the window and our two kids were just collateral damage. One rest stop, two bones, and three hours later we were to our destination, but not without a car full of dog hair, slobber all over our boys’ heads, and a few barks that made my husband swerve toward the nearest exit.
Greta has been spayed, but Greta has a baby. It’s the size and shape of a football and it squeaks. Annoyingly. All the time. The day after she came home from being spayed, she picked up this football, claimed it as her own and sleeps with it every night. At first she slept with it on her belly, like she was trying to replace what had been taken from her. Now she sleeps with it under her neck, or under a paw. It’s a bit eerie how protective she is of her “baby.” She whines until we give it to her and won’t sleep in her crate without it. She squeaks it in her mouth and then mimics the sound over and over with her own voice, like she is crying out on behalf of the baby she will never have. She gets quite worked up as the sound of the squeaker seems to rile her more and more. I have had six dogs and never had one that made me think twice about spaying, until Greta. I can’t help but wonder, does she know something is missing, or is her behavior just coincidence?
I am missing a gold earring. “So, what?” you might ask. Well, it was an anniversary present and I am hoping I find it before it is missed. Greta, my dog, and Adam, my son, consume a variety of non-food items when I am not looking. When my wedding ring went missing a year ago I spent a lot of time in the backyard mashing through dog poop and dirty diapers with a plastic fork just in case, only to find the ring in a hoodie pocket a month later. So, I am standing here with a plastic fork again. This time I am heavily weighing sentimental value against the gross factor. She is technically a puppy, but when her poop is larger than my fist can it truly be called puppy poop? Is a visual representation of love this important? I don’t know.
I still fall off my own bike, something I should probably find shame in instead of sharing, but the truth is I can barely get myself from point A to point B. So, first we added a seat to the front of my husband’s bike (between the handle bars and his bike seat) and later added a second seat to the back. So, Anthony’s bike has three seats, which is rather comical. But when we tie a sixty-pound Doberman to his contraption, things look rather hysterical. It’s a good workout for Greta and my husband and we end up entertaining a lot of onlookers. Anyone passing by with a phone camera snaps a picture of my husband and his entourage and, if they are lucky, and I am paying more attention to their gawking than my riding, they usually end up with a picture of me half-on the curb and half-off my bike, completing the three-ring circus act we like to perform on Saturday mornings for the neighborhood.
We used to have a beautiful backyard, then we got Greta. Her first self-assigned mission was to take out all the bromeliads. You would think their natural defense system (spiky leaves) would keep them safe. Not from our Greta! She would rip and shred them to pieces after pulling them out of the ground whole. We started off with about forty in our backyard and within two months had none. She then moved on to making frenemies with our sawgrass plants. They would fight and “bite” each other, and then roll around and make up. Over the course of a year, Greta has grown several feet taller and each sawgrass plant is on its last leg. That’s the price of friendship, I guess. Now, at almost a year old there is digging, and running, and, well, so much poop, that I doubt we will ever have a nice yard again. Anyone out there with ideas on making a backyard big-dog friendly, I’d love suggestions!
How do you pick the perfect dog out of a litter? We had no idea. Various friends of mine had taken pet psychics and veterinarians along with them. I decided the only way to pick a good dog for us was to present a puppy with her nemesis and see how she defended herself. When one year old Adam was let loose among the litter he started screeching excitedly. Two puppies hid, one peed herself and Greta stared unperturbed into the face of danger. She was calm and collected and stared him down. She was our dog. As far as Greta is concerned? We haven’t looked back. I am, however, still searching for the return policy on Adam.
Greta knows how to sit pretty for a treat, my sons not so much
Question: What happens when Coquina has baby fever but doesn’t really want another baby?
Answer: Her husband buys her a puppy. That’s how Greta the Doberman became part of our family. Greta was actually very malnourished when we got her. She was all skin and bones. We took her to the vet right away and felt like we had rescued her. She had a staph infection, worms, and we could literally count her ribs when we first took her home from the “breeder” (who had built a deceivingly stellar website from her double-wide). She started putting on weight and her coat is a beautiful black sheen now, but for a while we were certain she would never be 100%. We fed her every few hours, washed her in special medical shampoo for her coat, woke up three times a night to let her out (pushing food and liquids meant she couldn’t be left in her kennel for more than a few hours),and followed her around the house making sure she didn’t eat small toys. It was similar to having a baby, but instead of late night bottle feedings I followed her around the yard at 3AM and instead of blow out diapers I washed off paws that stepped backward into the poop pile. I still ended up with a baby, just of a different sort.
Charlie is my cat. I have had her for five years, which makes her somewhere between six and eight years old. I rescued her from a shelter and she took care of my rat problem within one week, which is how she earned the name Charlie. I was reading a book about the Viet Cong and decided her mad-hunting skills could best be compared to that of jungle warfare. She can catch a squirrel in broad daylight and has been known to take down owls, possums and egrets. Most of my four year old’s life lessons about death have been learned from our cat. I thought he would take the tragic killing of the baby birds in the oak tree this week a little hard. Instead, he asked if we could eat the leftovers. I am thinking I may need to reassess what he is learning from our pets.
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