November 12, 2020

In my younger years, our family had a Pomeranian we named her Lucky. And she was given to us by a man named Rudy who was an eccentric bachelor. One of his idiosyncrasies was that he would wear overalls, he wouldn’t wash them, they would get so dirty, they almost stood up on their own, and then he would throw them away and put on a new pair. So that’s probably one of the reasons he was a bachelor. I don’t know. But he was a nice guy. And yeah, Lucky was a sweet little Pomeranian. If I get a dog again, I’m certainly going to consider the Pomeranian.

So then we raised a little German Shepherd from the time it was a puppy, a friend of ours, named Curtis gave him to us. And he was a lovely dog. Very intelligent, and very strong. David, my brother David was the last to leave home. So he was closest to this dog. We named the dog, Renny after the famous television show about “Rin Tin Tin,” this dog that helps solve crimes and all that. And Renny, liked to go to the restaurant called the Rondevu, across the field and highway, because apparently there were steak bones to chew on. And maybe he even had a girlfriend. I’m not sure about that. But one day, he didn’t come back and David went looking for him he had been run over by a speeding car along the highway. David carried him home and buried him. It was a sad time for all of us, especially for David and another cat.

I grew up in a farm so these weren’t house pets. These were farm pets and animals. There was this mother cat she had the makeup of a, they called the Tuxedo Cats, the black and white. Well, she had made a nest under the pulley system in our barn. And I went up to visit her and she nudged her little kittens out one-by-one. And I felt so very special that she would share her kittens with me. I also visited the calves in the barn. And one would like to lick my hand. And I thought, “Well, I really have a way with animals, don’t I?”

And then I learned about salt in our skin. And the animals love salt. So there you go. And then I always thought it would be fun to milk a cow. But one night I was allowed to milk or try to milk Brownie, Brownie was the name of this…the boys and my dad would name the cows different girls names like Rita and Bonnie and so forth. But anyway, this was Brownie, and the next day Brownie died. And it turned out it wasn’t me. It was the fact that she had swallowed a lot of rusty nails somehow. And so she died of blood poisoning. But I gave up milking cows after the fact. I still wanna have a dog. I love dogs. I just have to balance it with the other things I want to do in my life now, but it would be great company especially, during this COVID time.

So the two dogs that I’ve had in my life were the pomeranian, Renny, and then the german shepherd. Oh, there was a third. But that was after I had gone to college. And he was a mixed breed. I think my dad named him Buster. And Buster was good with bringing the cows in.

When my daughter was old, maybe third grade or so my husband brought home a little puppy. And it was Australian Blue Heeler and it was beautiful and also very intelligent similar looking to a German Shepherd. But of course, Australian Blue Heeler would be good with sheep and we didn’t have any sheep. But gets kind of tricky to have your spouse bring home a puppy and give it to your daughter before walking in the door. Because we didn’t discuss it beforehand, and I would have liked that because any pet requires care, you know.