Pets | Memoir Monday (Week 31)

My father always loved dogs. When he married my mother they both shared the illusion of having a house with enough space to have a dog.

They had to wait a long time. I remember during the early years of my childhood we lived in very small spaces, sometimes in apartments where it was not at all comfortable to have a pet.

I was at school age when we moved to a new house, with a big yard. There my father was finally able to have his dog, but he also reserved a space where there were always chickens and sometimes even rabbits.

The first dog they bought did not last long at home, it was a black mongrel that had a very bad temper, in fact it was a very aggressive animal. My mother would not let us go near him. And the decision to give him away came one day when the crazed animal killed about three chickens. Until that day my mother wanted it at home.

Then I remember another one that was very cute, he was a big dog, a mix of German Shepherd and Collie, he was very affectionate, he loved to play with us. My brother and I would spend a lot of time throwing balls at him, he would bring them back and we would throw them again and neither he nor we would get tired of that endless game.

He also had a great sense of protection. When my other siblings were small my mother would take them out into the yard to sunbathe in a small wooden pen lined with foam rubber.

That animal would stay close to where the children were and would not leave them until my mother came back to get them. On those occasions we could throw the ball to him and he would control his desire to go after it, he would see the ball, look at the children and not move from the place.

When the hens came out of the coop he would never attack them, he would start barking to alert my mother, she would hear him and immediately go out to the yard, she would know that some hen had gotten out and with the help of the dog she would put them back in the coop.

About twelve years ago my oldest son went to work out of the country and left me two big Golden dogs to take care of, Zeus and Lucky.

Those animals were very docile, the male was huge, playful and mischievous. The female dog was very quiet and affectionate.

It was difficult for me to walk with both of them in the street. The male was too restless, he had a lot of strength, he constantly gave me big tugs with the chain, and the walks became a competition of strength between him and me.

At that time I had a Jeep CJ7. Every morning and afternoon I would take the dogs out to a nearby field, where they could run for a long time without bothering anyone. When my daughter accompanied me I would start playing with them throwing balls or pieces of wood at them.

That land was bordered by some tennis courts. The whole area had a kind of natural barrier made up of big bushes and a high bush. The dogs loved to get in there, sometimes they would spend a long time there and would not come out until they managed to find a lost ball. There were so many balls that they brought that I filled a big box with almost new balls.

Those dogs were really lovely.

In the second year of having them, one Christmas day, one of my sons got careless and left the gate to the street a little open. There were a lot of fireworks that night and the male was very sensitive to them. No one knew when the dog got out. Suddenly he was nowhere to be found in the house. We all went out looking for him and couldn't find him. We never heard anything about Zeus, surely someone took him away.

Lucky stayed with us for a few more years. With her, if I could go for a quiet walk in the street, she never left my side. And if she saw any other person approaching she would start growling. In the afternoons, after the walks, she would sit next to me while I drank coffee. If children came to visit he would always play with them.

One day she began to have trouble getting up, and when I took her to the vet the diagnosis was terrible, she had contracted a spinal cord disease and would become an invalid, unable to control her sphincters. Seeing her in that state was too sad. My daughter and I decided to find a veterinarian to come to the house to put her down. We then cremated her remains in an animal crematorium.

Since then I have not been able to have any more pets, I still have the illusion of being able to have another Golden dog at some point.

I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in the week thirty-one. For more information click on the link.

Images edited in Photoshop.

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