Did you know that today is National Pet Day?

Since I’ve been married, we’ve had our share of pets here–from hermit crabs to dwarf hamsters to African Clawed Frog, to fish of all kinds, and of course a dog.

We no longer have pets of any kind, and it’s primarily due to the fact that we have no room for cages, aquariums, etc. Our last pet was a Basenji mix named Winnie that I adopted from an animal shelter in 1998. Boy, was she a joy. Let me tell you her story.

My husband and I were married in 1997 and moved several hours away from our family. He traveled several days out of the week, and being a young, newly married 20-year-old, I was lonely and wanted a little security at night. You know, a little yapper to alert me to any visitors. The problem was, my husband didn’t want a dog in the house. He didn’t particularly like dogs, he told me, and little wonder–the dog my parents’ had when we were dating growled at my husband from afar. (And this is a man who to this day gets attention from my mom’s three dogs as if he were wearing clothes dipped in bacon.) Bo, a purebred Maltese, wasn’t particularly friendly and was highly territorial over me. And everything else in the house for that matter.

It took a while to convince my husband to agree to having a dog, and so one February in 1998, I went to the animal shelter, just to look around. Hubby hadn’t agreed yet, but I knew he would, so I went looking. Didn’t find that “fit” for us among the small dogs that were there. By the time he had agreed that I could get a dog, it was October, and I went “shopping”.

I wish I had a picture of my experience. When I walked in, there were only two small dogs to choose from (we had a small apartment, so a big dog wasn’t going to work): one was a male terrier of some sort that was barking his head off at me, and the other was this black and white dog that was labeled “Dachshund/Terrier”. Didn’t look like any dachshund or terrier I’d ever seen, but that didn’t matter. She was calm, meek, and quietly wagged her tail at me. I put my hand inside the chain link fencing, and she licked my hand. That was all it took. I knew she was the one.

I filled out the adoption paperwork and came back two days later (after she’d been spayed and dewormed) and picked her up. I put her in a blanket-lined box that I had (I was afraid she’d puke in my car lol), and we drove home. She was quiet the whole way, and when we got home, she hid under the kitchen table and only came out to get a drink and a nibble of dog food. When my husband got home, I said, “Meet Winnie!”

He said, “You bought a skunk?”

In his defense, she was black and white, and her looks alone weren’t too attractive. Later on, we discovered that her personality made her lovely. That first night, I had a meeting to attend and left him alone with Winnie. When I got home, he’d almost convinced her to come out from under the kitchen table. Almost.

By the next morning, she had become fairly acclimated to her new home, and slowly over that first week she decided we were ok. During that time, though, I knew that she wasn’t a dachshund, and she wasn’t a terrier. She didn’t bark at all, at least not like most dogs. She had this “woof” noise that she’d make and occasionally she made a yelp noise. As far as barking went though, it was a rare thing. She was definitely unlike any dog I’d ever grown up with, and as a kid, my parents had several breeds….all were barking dogs. 😀

Winnie was so friendly. I named her well. Her name meant “friend of peace” and she certainly was that. She tried to make friends with everyone. She befriended a neighbor’s cat named Beaker and a neighborhood stray (whom everyone fed) that we named Brown Dog (I have no idea what his real name was). There was only one dog who hated Winnie–Dr. P.’s (one of my professors) Jack Russell terrier. So we avoided him at all costs, much to Winnie’s chagrin.

Winnie was a picture ham. She loved having her picture made. In most of her pictures, she looks docile and meek, but as a young thing, she was very active and wanted to constantly play. She loved to cuddle, though, and would curl right up with me and even would let me hold her like a baby. I always said she thought she was human. I took lots of pictures of her, and she was a big part of our life.

We took her everywhere. When we traveled, she went, too. Staying at a hotel? She went, too. We never put her in a kennel for a stay; it was just a given that she went along. And she hated long road trips. They made her nervous, and sometimes she would get so nervous she’d be sick. That was rough.

As time went on that first year, she decided that she liked my husband best. My husband–the dude who said he didn’t like dogs, didn’t want one. The very guy who I argued with for months just to get him to agree to let me have her. The dude whose shoelaces she chewed, gold necklace she destroyed, slippers she chewed up . . . He liked her. And he didn’t just like her, he played with her. He’d do his sit ups and push ups at night, and she would run around him while he did them, because she knew if she did, he’d end up wrestling with her when he was done. He was the one she’d jump up in a chair to sit with, the one she leaned up against in our bed at night. Yup, the very person who saved her hide–ME!–I got nothin’! 🙂

It wasn’t long after that that I started getting ideas of what kind of a breed of dog that she was. I never pinpointed exactly what she was. I knew that she must have Basenji in her. At times, I wondered about Whippet. Still to this day, I’m not sure what mix that she was.

I also have wondered who on earth would have gotten rid of her. She was ten months old (by teeth examination) when I adopted her, so she had a past of some sort before I came along. She never ever tried to run away from us, so unless she had been abused, I don’t think she would have run away. I often just resigned myself to thinking that she was meant to be with us–who cared how she got there? 🙂

When we had our first son, she loved him. Everywhere he was, she was. When I’d lay him on the floor on a blanket, she’d lay on it too. When I would take a picture of him, she’d get in the picture too. When I’d feed him in his high chair, she was right there waiting on him to toss her a piece. They were best buds. Same thing happened with my second son. She loved them, and even through the toddler years when they pulled her tail, ears, and bit her! She never once showed aggression.

As she got older, she slowed down some. She still held that desire to make friends with people and animals, and by this time, we lived in another county. She loved making friends with dogs and cats. One day when we were visiting with my inlaws, she saw a black and white cat that she really wanted to befriend–lo and behold, though, it was a skunk. Yup, she got sprayed. It happened at night, it was Thanksgiving, and we were staying at my in-laws’ house that night. It was cold, and we put her in the barn. The small was overpowering. The next day, we put her in the car and drove the two hours home with her. We thought we’d be sick. It took a week to get the worst of the smell off her.

Her last four years really showed a decline. She had gum disease, and lost a lot of teeth during those last years. We had to move to using only soft foods. She was still our spunky Winnie at times. When she’d get excited, she would run through the house and her little toenails would sometimes slide on the linoleum in the kitchen. Sometimes she’d not put on the brakes fast enough and would hit the refrigerator. Ka-thunk! She’d stop for a minute, look at one of us, get her wits about her, and go on. 😀

It was hard to watch her age. The last year she was with us was truly sad. I knew her quality of life was diminished, and I began thinking about having her put to sleep. It was an agonizing thought though because I didn’t know when the right time was. Sometimes she seemed so full of life, and other days she slept a lot. I was worried that if I took her into the vet’s office, they’d ask why I would euthanize. It was hard to know when the right time was. She was sixteen, though, and she was eating less. She stopped jumping up onto the furniture for her naps and slept on her doggie blankie on the floor in my room. She found it hard to get up and down the deck steps. She couldn’t hear well, and she couldn’t see well at all, and she began having weird potty accidents in random places. But when she started standing with her nose in her water bowl not drinking, I knew something was wrong. Her nose was IN the bowl, but she just stood there like that like she was in a daze. She was getting thinner, and she wasn’t drinking enough. I knew it was time then. I was sad because I was expecting my third child, and I knew that this would be a baby she wouldn’t get to meet.

I lined a laundry basket with an old blanket and put her inside. She rode to the vet’s office without a peep. Took her in, and my sons and I must have been quite the sight. The look in everyone’s eyes told me that they knew why we were there. One lady was in with her pet, and she teared up when I told her why we were there.

My oldest son and I went in with Winnie. I wanted to be there with her as she passed. I wanted to be in there talking to her, stroking her one last time. It was heartbreaking, but I was worried that she would be scared. She’d always shook like crazy when I took her to the vet.

It only felt right that I be there to say goodbye. After she passed, I stood there with my son and the vet and we talked about her life, how fun she’d been, what a good dog she’d been, and what she meant to us. She was one of a kind. I’ll never forget that day that I first saw her–that peaceful, meek expression. That was the first expression that I saw, and also the last.

She’ll always be in our hearts. Our little Winnie Belle. Our Winnie girl.