Past loves

   RIPTIDE

My first experience with Great Danes was Riptide. Also known as “the Gentleman”, he was a quiet and supremely confident fellow. I was 2 days old when we met, and he was my first and favorite babysitter. Mom would put me on a blanket in the shade while she tended the garden, and Riptide would lay next to me. When I began to crawl, and could crawl off the blanket, he would pick me up by my diapers and put me back on!

As I grew older, we developed a ritual with our Oreo cookies: this half for me, this half for you…we ate watermelon together, and Riptide spit out the seeds in a neat pile so I could clean them up. He wandered with me through our thirteen acres, keeping me safe from snakes, groundhogs and other critters that could hurt me. He also made the best pillow, already warm and comfy.

When a car turned off the highway into our driveway, he would sit up and growl. If he recognized the sound of the engine, he would go back to his nap. He discovered one day that if he rang the doorbell, someone would open the door. And after seeing my Grandmother slap my brother, he wouldn’t let her near us when Mom or Dad was’t there.

He never trusted Grandma again, and rightly so–she had a mean streak. So Riptide found all sorts of ingenious ways to make that known to her! We would leave our toys outside all the time, but if Grandma left so much as a gardening shoe, it would be shredded, buried, or otherwise disposed of! He would dig up her roses, but leave our gardens alone. And one fine day he ate exactly half of Grandma’s birthday cake. One side was crumbless, licked perfectly clean, and the other side untouched…leave it to a Dane!

    BRAZOS

Brazos was a bulldozer of a dog! This pic was when he was 5 months old. A huge Dane, as an adult he stood almost 38 inches at the shoulder, and weighed 220 pounds. He was just solid red meat. He came into my life in 1987, living almost ten years before the arthritis began to make getting around difficult. He was a good old boy, laid back and comfortable anywhere. And he was our first Mantle colored Dane.

It was with Brazos that I started taking my dogs most anywhere I went. He loved riding in the car, and it was hysterically funny watching people roll up their windows and cross the street to avoid him! They had no idea what a freindly fellow he was. Leash or no leash, Brazos went into the pet store. If I had forgotten the leash, I hung my purse around his neck. The store manager offered to hire him as the customer complaint employee!

Brazos was 8 when we rescued a litter from a puppy mill. He watched over them, and it was Brazos that alerted us that they were very ill. Only two of the pups survived the parvo, Shabah and Merlin. He was head babysitter and manners teacher! Old and grumpy can come in handy with misbehaving puppies!

And Brazos was his vet’s therapist. Sadly, she had been mauled by a half sedated dog, and was afraid of dogs after that. But Brazos insisted on her being his vet. The first time she saw him after the mauling, he smelled the still angry red scars, and the arm that had lost some of its strength, and laid his head upon her shoulder. He made a point of leaning on her, rubbing his head on her, and gently nudging her weakened arm. When we put him down, she was heartbroken, and put a picture of him in her office.

          SHABAH  

If you’ve never had a dog that seemed like a human with four legs and a tail, it would be difficult to explain my relationship with Shabah. He was a rescue, surviving parvo, enduring illness his entire life. His vocabulary was over 200 words, and his brain was never off. He was my first Blue Merle color, and his adult size was 36 inches, 185 pounds. When we brought him home, he curled up on my lap and never left.

He and I had an intuitive bond. We didn’t have to speak, he just knew what I was feeling. If I was sad, he would lay down beside me and lean, resting his head on my chest. If I was angry, he would sit and look at me with a questioning face. If I was tired, he would play by himself. And if I was upset, he would open the fridge and bring me the can of whipped cream–To him, that treat was the best fix for anything!

Shabah was extremely timid, and I took him to obedience class for the socialization. He learned a reliable sit in one day, a down and heel in less than a week. There was no need to remind him, no repetition needed; he simply never forgot anything you taught him. He learned to spell, when Mom and I talked about things we didn’t want him to hear, like petsmart, french fries, and go. We began to use pig latin, and eventually moved into foreign languages to keep our secrets!

If you haven’t guessed by now, you should know that Danes think. Those big heads have great big brains! Shabah also understood time, to some extent. If we said we’ll go in the car in the morning, he would fetch my purse for me when I got up the next day. If I said at 10 o’clock we’re going to puppy class, when the clock struck ten bells, he would get his leash.

He never had to be taught to help. One year he saw me carrying Christmas presents to the tree, and he simply picked up two of them by the bag handle and followed along. I had to clear some wild roses from the fence, and after a couple hours of watching me dig and pull on the same &*(*&^ bush, over he comes. He took the rose crown in his mouth and started pulling–he ripped out a 12 foot root system all by himself. From then on, if I couldn’t pull a weed, I’d ask him.

Because of him, I believe a Dane can be an outstanding service dog. He was my baby, and when he was sick, I would hand feed him from a spoon. I would pick him up and help him outside. If he looked sad or in pain, I would lay on his bed and sing him lullibies so he could sleep. He would accept anything I had to do to help him, even if it hurt or stung. He had a futon mattress for a bed, with a heated matress pad. It was the best bed in the house!

When the cancer got into his bones, and he broke a back leg, I put him to sleep. I don’t think I have ever cried so hard in my life. I loved all my danes, but Shabah was special. Since his favorite flower was red poppies, I planted 150 square feet of red poppies as my memorial to him. The puppy’s poppy patch is a poor substitute for his presence, but it will have to do until I get to heaven. And if Shabah isn’t there, I don’t want to go…

     TAJ  

After rescuing sickly Danes for some 15+ years, I wanted a healthy boy. I was sickly myself, having been overcome with fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue. So I looked around carefully at local breeders. Some 4 years after losing my Shabah, I found Taj…the Tajmonster would play with anything! His personality was all fun and games.

At 8 weeks old, I took him to the vet for a crop and neuter. His ears stood by themselves after a single taping, but the anesthesia messed with his kidneys. Something else was wrong, too. He didn’t want to play. He didn’t even want to stand up. After some period of fear, the vet took xrays, and discovered my little buddy had HOD.

Hypertrophic osteodystrophy is a nutritional disease. The long bones (legs, jaw, feet) are weak and fracture above the growth plates. As the fractures heal, the bones twist and deform. My buddy was walking around with four broken legs and eating with a fractured jaw…Once again, I hand fed, I picked up and carried. From the age of 5 months, he was on steroids, and would stay on them the rest of his short life.

A common myth about HOD is that it is caused by too much protien. The veterinary studies though have named the culprit to be the ratio of the minerals calcium and phosphorous. I had bought a premium food for him, and that is what killed him…talk about guilt.

My play buddy would play even if he couldn’t stand up! We made up a game called “blankie monster”, where the blanet stole his ball. He would root around in it until he found his ball, and give a few triumphant squeaks. And the blankie monster would reach out and grab his nose, his tail or anything else nearby, and he would smush is with his nose.

On good days, he played soccer with peanut M&M’s, or waited for the remodlers to be distracted so he could steal their pencils or tools so they had to chase him. And if they ate all his M&M’s he told them off, with high pitched barking and stomping his feet. They came to work just to play with Taj. They would even pick him up and carry him outside to piddle when I was hurting.

By 23 months, the good days were few. The steroids had messed up his body. He was loosing his hair. And his stomach. Vomiting and gas became a daily problem. He would wake me up at night because his tummy hurt, and he would throw up. I couldn’t do this to him anymore, because he no longer wanted to play. It was time. Dammit, it was time, and he was still just a baby. It would be two years before I wanted to start looking again.

When I get to heaven, I want all my boys there; Riptide, Lance, Shalimar, Brazos, Merlin, Shabah, and Taj. I want them all to have a feild to play in, and after meeting Jesus first, I want to go run and play in that warm summer field with them. I want to be able to run without tiring, to horse around without pain, and never again have to say goodbye…