Dogs on boats, and our best Friends in general.

Back in 91 my other half & i having moved nearer the woods decided to get a dog. We went to the Dog pound & came home with a lurcher cross who looked like 90% greyhound. With proper food & exercise he filled out until he looked like a Dingo with white socks. One day we were traing for a gundog test & he wouldnt give up the dummy, i got it of him by brute force & he went for me, I dont mind admiting i was scared but if i had lost he would have had to be put down. As it happened i won & he became my best friend.
Bungle as he was named (dont ask) was a mighty hunter who put more in the bag than i ever did with the gun. We mooched to work & back nearly every day for 12 years hunting rabbits & squirrels with a catapult, he guarded my tools in the van when we were out on a job.
Eventually he got lymphoma & several months later i took him on his last shoot, we got a couple of pigeons & he retrieved them both in style though very slow.
A week later it was time & i called the vet & she put him to sleep laying in the sun on his own lawn.
I buried him on the marsh where we used to go wildfowling.
He broke my bloody heart & i could not speak to anyone for days afterwards.
I got a new dog a while later who is equally as good in his own way but i dread that day when i have to do it again. I suppose its the price we pay for the bond between man & wolf.

 

oh ya
well my dog can beat up your dog

woof


ps
I cried uncontrolably when it was time to drive old Zeus down to the vet that last time
they ask you a few stupid questions and when I simply could not choke out the answered they just said ok
even offered me grief counseling
it was horrible
I have yet to get another dog
basically nothing could replace that old guy
and nothing could make me want to go through that again

 

We have a huge oleander bush in the middle of our property, and twenty years or more of pets are buried under and around it: everything from dogs and cats to rats, lizards, and a cherry-head conure (parrot) of mine who thought he was a feathered pit bull.

 

My neighbour had a shepherd-gawdonlyknows cross, a very smart dog, practically talked. I asked him what kind of guy his master was and he said "oaf, oaf" ...

 

We are not allowed to bury dogs in the yard around here so I get them cremated and scatter the ashes in the local park, near my canoing lake at a location that they all seemed to like. It lets me visit.

 

Zeus was not the sharpest tool in the shed

once I was just rumbling around a little with one of the guys
one would think my dog would go after the other guy
no
Zues reaches in and latches onto my leg
tries to drag me out of it
thanks Zeus
bite the other guy next time ok

my patented answer to
can I pet your dog ?
does he bite ?
was generally
"only me" with a smile

 

Like most labs, Jenny had a tail that could knock a hole in a wall, she would leave bruises on my leg when I came home from work.

For some reason she was a kid magnet, little toddlers always wanted to pet her and the mothers would, bless 'em, ask me if it was safe. I would always say yes, the end with the teeth is OK but keep 'em away from the other end.

It wasn't safe to get too close to the smiling end if you had food in your hand. One kid did and his piece of pizza vanished in a blur. He was upset but I had warned the brat and fortunately his mom backed me up. Nasty little bugger wanted my dog shot because he wouldn't listen.

 

We aren't allowed to do it, either. But we do it anyway.

 

ya they made some fool leash law a while ago
so I got Zeus a really short leash he could not pee on and turned him loose
hey
he had a leash on
and he was under control

I got away with that one countless times

 

my parents had a jack russel terrier... small dogs but with incredible strength for that little body and very much attached to people...

when i was leaving one day by car, ~ 5 km from home i saw a pair of ears flopping up and down behind the trunk when looking into the rear mirror...
that silly dog just ran after the car and i was doing 60 km/h at least but for his small body i did not see him until he tired a bit and fell back...

when i was a small kid - probably 5 years old - i went with my aunt to visit one of her friends... they had a bernhadiner... a massive one...
this dog liked kids very much and as soon as we entered the premises this huge animal came rushing towards me, a head bigger than my chest, ~90 kg of weight and pushed me to the ground with ease with one paw... i thought "thats it - now you die!"....
and started licking my face...
scared the **** out of me...

 

The same similar thing happened to me when I was 7. I went to my piano teacher's house, passed through the gate and her German Shepherd "Robbie" raced down the sidewalk and knocked me down with paws to chest, and gave me a face licking I will never forget.

 

It was my experience as a meter reader that Jack Russels love to attach themselves to people.

I ran into one in his back yard one day, and started scratching and thumping him. He loved it so much he rolled over on his back, so I could get his chest and belly too. And as soon as I stopped, he latched onto me as I straightened up. I felt downright silly standing there with a little dog hanging off my arm, growling with his mouth full...fortunately I was wearing a leather jacket.

Another time I walked by one who was inside a chain link fence. He was standing there quietly watching me, so I reached down as I went by, said, "howdy, big guy," and kind of brushed my knuckles across the fence so he could get a sniff of me. Somehow he managed to poke his little snout through a stretched spot in the fence, latch onto one of my knuckles, and hang on for dear life. I had tears in my eyes by the time I got loose from that one.

A third Jack Russel made a run at me down a driveway one day. I reached out with my dog stick, stuck it through between his front legs, and flipped him onto his back about four feet up the drive. Then I looked up, and saw his owner standing there watching. I told her, "sorry about that," and she replied, "oh, don't be. Maybe it'll teach the little b*****d some manners."

 

Tiffany was a Brittany Spaniel who appeared outside my office building in 1990 with no collar or other ID. Having failed to find her original owner I took her home, and she became the lifelong friend of my other dog Jenny.

Brittany spaniels are incredibly energetic dogs, always on the move with energy to burn. Tiffany would burn off her excess energy by trotting up and down the kitchen for hours on end. Because of the resulting sound on the hard floor my kids named her "Tippy-toes" which name stuck for the rest of her life.

She was rather dark for a Brittany, she was the liver and white color of the original French breed rather than the more popular orange and white which breeders have concentrated on.

She was the ultimate bred-in-the-bone pointing dog. I often used to accompany my buddy who trained shooting and hunting dogs for a living. He was the one who pointed out that she was doing perfect figure-of-eights ahead of us, never out of sight for more than a few seconds even in dense bush, checking every tree and bush for a bird up to a hundred feet either side as we walked along. he said that was the single most difficult thing to teach a dog, and she was doing it out of instinct.

She died at 17 years which is very old for a Brittany.



The fellow on the opposite side of the couch is my first grandchild.

 

he looks a little darker and a bit hairier than what simple family resemblance can account for
are you sure! there was no a milkman involved in this process somewhere

 

Just to clarify, the dog's the one on the left.