Living in The Doghouse

I have always liked dogs well enough, but was never a real dog person. We had a couple farm dogs that stayed in the barn and I made sure they were fed and so on. I occasionally petted them and talked to them, but I was never a real dog person.

Then after raising six children and having numerous other kids around, my husband and I found ourselves alone in a big old farmhouse that seemed way too quiet. So I said offhandly one day "I ought to get a dog or something to liven it up a little around here." Well my youngest son took me at my word and for Christmas he brought home a beautiful golden retriever three-month old puppy. It was a little furball and cute as can be and definitely livened the place up right from day one. I started kicking around names trying to decide what to name her. I worked in an office that had a hearing impaired person who had a golden retriever hearing aid dog named Dougie. So I was thinking about the name Dougie and thought Daisy sounded pretty good with it. My youngest daughter came home later that same night and said that her boyfriend had a golden retriever named Duke and she was thinking Daisy would be a good name. We couldn't believe that we were both thinking of the same name, and Daisy she became. We all fell in love with her, but we lost an awful lot of shoes to being chewed up and cleaned up a lot of paper that was shredded and found that having a puppy was a lot of work.

Time went on and by the next summer, my youngest son was living at home again and working in the city near here. One day he was working on a phone tower and noticed that next door there was a box of puppies that the people were giving away. By the end of the day there was only one little puppy left in the box - a black lab little boy. He had bumps on his hind legs right at the ankles and no one seemed to want to take him home. My son couldn't resist him and Roscoe moved in that night - an irresistable little black ball of fur. (The vet said the bumps were probably from getting his feet caught in a door.) So now we had two dogs and we absolutely adored them - babying them, talking baby talk to them and treating them like regular members of the family.

Time went on and when Roscoe was nine months old, he discovered Daisy was a girl. Now I didn't think he was old enough to get those kind of thoughts, but that just goes to show you how much I know. Two months later Daisy delivered an adorable seven little puppies - 2 were black, 3 were red, 1 was blonde and 1 was all white with a little black nose and little black pads on her paws. She looked like a little polar bear. It was no problem finding homes for all the puppies - labs and retreivers are very popular. The little white one, which we were calling Polar Bear, had been claimed by a guy I work with. I was holding and cuddling all the puppies so they would be used to people and make good pets, but I cuddled Polar Bear more because I wanted the guy at work to be really happy with her and yes, because she was so doggone cute! But the guy at work backed out on me and decided it was not a good time to get a puppy. By this time Polar Bear had won my heart and I couldn't bear to give her to anyone else, so Po became my little girl. As she got older she has remained white on her belly and legs, but turned slightly darker on her back to a pale blonde. So now we had three dogs and boy were they a handful. They chewed on everything, ripped up everything, stole food every chance they got and caused general havoc continually. My youngest daughter adopted one puppy and named him Bernard, because he had such a big head that he resembled a St. Bernard.

Then the following summer we somehow didn't manage to keep Daisy and Roscoe apart again, and Daisy delivered ten little puppies this time, although one died the first night. So we had nine little cuties traveling around - five black and four reddish ones. There was one who was definitely the leader of the pack - he was always out front leading all the others into trouble. He was the biggest like Bernard had been, so my daughter claimed him too and called him BJ - for Bernard Jr. He stayed with us until he was six weeks old, then my daughter took him home. But she quickly learned how much work and trouble two dogs could be and she wasn't home enough to train BJ, and so after two or three months, she let her brother adopt him. Now you say, what is wrong with that? Well, the brother lived at home, which meant BJ moved back here and now we had four dogs living here - raising heck and making messes and at times driving us crazy. Now my son has moved out again, but guess what, the dog is still here.

So here lives my husband and me, Daisy and Roscoe and Po and BJ! Help - they're driving me nuts! I go to work all day and come home and have to sweep up the mess they made every night. They love to get up on the kitchen table and look out the window to wait for us to come home. They love to chew up the sofa cushions. They love to chew shoes - I have lost count of how many pairs they have managed to ruin. And they love to bark at people walking by which has cost us a ticket because we have a leash law in this town even though it's the only town in Onondaga County without zoning! I don't know why the people complained - why should they be afraid of four dogs that weigh 70 or 80 pounds each standing on the edge of the lawn barking their heads off?

But then they look at us with those goofy smiles and big eyes and give us a kiss or cuddle up to us and lay their fuzzy faces against ours in a hug, or run like crazy after a ball to see who can get it first and bring it back and we just melt. They are our at-home family now and I don't know what we would do without them. They are just like kids though - way too many but how could we choose who to give up? We couldn't. So we try to forget the extra work and the chewed up shoes and concentrate on the good times. And my daughter still likes to tell Roscoe he was the last one in the box......