We had a very sick Cocker Spaniel that I really don't remember much. My mom had him before she married my dad and he had been a stray in bad shape. He went blind and had kidney failure so he had to be put down.
The next dog was Gus, a larger Dachshund. My dad had a friend who had to get rid of him, due to their youngest kid having super bad allergies. I remember the kids crying when we picked him up. He wasn't exactly a nice dog in a lot of ways, he bit everyone in the house except me, even my grandmother when she stayed overnight while my folks were out of town. I had horrible allergies and the allergy doctor recommended getting rid of the dog. He went into kidney failure and he had to be put down anyway. They told me the "farm" story, but I knew he was really sick and they put him to sleep. I was really sad, but my mom was a basket case.
About a year later, I wasn't any better, so we started talking about getting another dog. Our neighbors had a Beagle and that's what we decided to get. A few days before my 8th birthday, we went out to dinner, and my folks told me and my sister, who was about to turn 14, that we were going to look at puppies after we finished. We ended up at a pet store(NO! we didn't know any better back then) where they had 3 nice looking pups, two fat females, and one scrawny male who had been wormed a few days earlier, and looked rough. He played with me great though, and I got to make the decision to get him. He turned out to be a very nicely bred dog from a kennel where the owner had become ill, and he sold almost every dog he had as fast as he could because he was told he would die soon. His sire was a pretty well known champion in field trials and lived to be quite old. "Farfel" was a chip off the old block, not only was he huge for a Beagle (40 Pounds), he had his daddie's temper too, as in bad. He loved to bay, and to roam, and he got loose frequently where he was known to get into fights with the male dogs in the neighborhood. He met his sire when he was almost 10 years old when I saw the breeder's name in a magazine I got from this guy who ran his Beagles in the woods by our house. I called him up and when I gave him the number off the papers we got, he asked me to come down to his place, about an hour away. He looked like "Junior Samples" from Hee-Haw, but was very nice, and Farfel's daddy and Farfel looked like twins! Both had gotten grey over their entire bodies quite early. They sniffed each other, and then ignored each other and walked away. Farfel loved pups, and was incredibly patient with them, and I almost took one of his half-brothers home that day, but I didn't. Farfel fell over dead one month shy of 12. His sire lived to be 16! Oh, the kennel owner was misdiagnosed, and lived to be almost 90 years old. More then 40 years after he sold most of his dogs.
Farfel got my friend's Lab pregnant just before he died. My friend had to leave town suddenly, and never told me he had plopped her over my fence a few minutes before I put Farfel out. I had just gotten up, and had shaved and taken a shower before I looked out the window, and they were hooked up. Two pups were born from that hookup, a male who was super smart, and very dominating, and a female, who was a "swimmer" at first. She was so bullied around that I took her a couple of days after Farfel died to keep her from being tormented to death by her brother, who was nearly fully Lab sized, versus her 37 slender pounds. Her name was Blackie. About two months after I got her, I went out and spent a lot of money for a purebred yellow Lab pup. He had health problems from day one. He was a Hermaphrodite, and developed Severe arthritis at about 3 years. His name was Joe. They were alone until the age of almost seven, when I got talked into a Pit Mix, Gus (I recycled the name, it fit somehow). When Joe was about 12, he went sour health wise, and became demented and attacked Gus several times. We had to put him down the next day. Blackie lived another year, she had liver failure suddenly, and had to be put down. Gus lived until 14.5, and suddenly developed cancer. His pain threshold was so high, he was nearly gone before we even found out he was sick. Ten days after he had undergone an exploratory surgery, we put him down. I was a basket case.
I had planned on getting two Greater Swiss Mountain dogs, and was about to put a deposit down on a male and a female pup from a breeder near Columbus, but a friend told me about his ex girlfriend trying to get homes for 13 'lab" pups. We called her and went out the next night. We were dead meat at that point. Mom was a Lab/Dobe mix, and dad was unknown. The pup we would name King climbed up on the couch with my mother, and went to sleep on her lap. Molly seemed to be linked to the other pup, so we took her too. These two pups were the easiest ones I've ever had, they are the least afraid of things, and were super easy to housebreak, and never really chewed much, unlike Gus who destroyed a lot of stuff when he was in his big chewing stage. They will be nine years old soon, and both of them are doing great. Molly has bad hips, but they haven't seemed to be really be bothering her yet. They are the healthiest dogs I have ever had, and King is a "dog of a lifetime".
I'm so glad that she did because he has been such a blessing in my life.
