My Amazing Dog

Just like everyone and their children whether they are human or pets people always feel their pets are special, because after all, they are family, they are always there for us, they spend time with us even when no one else will. We are their pack (or a part of it) and they are loyal to us to the end. It's just their nature to be this way once we have bonded with them to be a part of or their complete pack.

Once they get to know our friends and relatives they become members of a dogs pack too, hopefully. Though it is true there are many one man or one women dogs that one should be careful of about this too. So, this is something to think about when you choose a breed to own unless it is a mutt then you just take what you get then.

about 13 1/2 years ago I was looking for a dog and so was my wife. We both wanted a dog because my daughter was old enough for that at about age 4 or 5. We both found two different dogs the same day. So, when my wife called me that she had found the dog she wanted I said she could keep hers if she let me keep mine. Mine was a 17 month old Long Hair German Shepard mixed with an Australian Shepard.

I had been at a Blockbuster renting a movie (yes this dates this story doesn't it?) and saw large cages with dogs outside the blockbuster with a volunteer from the Humane society with these dogs in cages. I walked up to a really beautiful dog the looked a lot like a long hair German shepard only with very different ears and a different tail and an even softer coat. I looked into these eyes and this was the most intelligent amazing dog I had ever encountered. I wondered "Who?" would give up such an amazing dog. I realized it likely was a male or female soldier shipping out to another area where they couldn't take the dog with them.

The dog reminded me a lot of my father's huge short hair German Shepard that he called king because he was incredibly huge and the dog scared my Mom so much after my father passed away that she gave the dog back to my father's sister whose dog Heidi had had him which was probably a good idea because Heidi was still alive then so he had people he knew who could handle a really big dog as well as his mother.

I found out my new dog's name and called my wife and she had her dog too which was an older corgi-jack russell terrior combination. Though I like this dog she got she was always rolling in dog poop or horse poop out on the trail which was really a problem for me and the dog was so stubborn she wouldn't stop doing this no matter what I did. I learned later dogs do this to mask their scent for hunting so animals will think they are being hunted by poop and not an animal or something.

Anyway, my dog was and is about 75 pounds with a really soft coat that looks very similar to a long haired German sheppard only with an Australian Sheppard  dogs ears and rear legs and tail that more remind me of a large Collie. So, he has a really long hair and soft coat about as soft as any dog you ever will see. But that also means he is always blowing coat which can be difficult too because he has always been both an outdoor and indoor dog. We think he is likely 1/2 long hair German Shepard and 1/2 Australian Sheep dog which makes him the most intelligent dog I have ever been around in my life. And whoever trained him the first 17 months of his life taught him about 300 words which he was capable of understanding.

So, literally, he is the most intelligent dog I have ever been around and will obey commands without a second thought (Now). But this isn't who he was when I got him. At first he was sort of like "I'm young and more intelligent than you and I'm smarter than you are."

So, at first I wondered if he was too much dog for me in this sense. But, luckily he tried to steal a large pizza off the cooktop stove after coming out of the oven and I had to scare him to teach him he couldn't do that. Then everything was fine. I was the Alpha dog and he was the Beta Dog and ever since he has been the most wonderful dog that every single person begged me to let them take him home with them. Even my daughter's 15 year old baby sitter back then said, "Boy, if you're dog was a human  he would be a perfect boyfriend."

He was everyone's favorite dog. He was full of life, intelligent, loved to fetch sticks so I didn't have to teach him, and everyone especially women always fell in love with him because he is so beautiful, so soft and so magic in personality.

However, now he is 15 1/2 years old and still beautiful but there is grey in his muzzle, his eyes are faded and he had a stroke today out on the trail which we found from someone who does elder care for big older dogs is a sign that the end is within a few days, months or years. It is toward the end with bigger dogs where they have these small strokes and they either recover from them or they don't ongoing.

On my dog he walked under a wire gate to keep cars out of a fire road and it triggered something in him and then his right front leg went out from under him and he appeared to have a seizure and lost control of his bowels while he was lying on his side. Then there was no life in his eyes so I thought he had died because they were open and he wasn't home. But, within a few minutes I realized he wasn't dead, just stunned. Within 15 minutes I could lift him to a standing position where he walked to my wife's car who was there by then and I lifted him up into my wife's Lexus and she drove both dogs home. Now, he only ate a little bit but the elder care dog person said we need to let him rest for at least 4 days before he goes for another walk with us because he has to heal up from his mini-stroke where he lost consciousness for at least a minute or two.

I'm hoping he will be around for when my two daughters come for Christmas and I hope he is still here for my son coming from thousands of miles away around late January because my son is my dog's favorite person on earth, so I hope all of them  get to see each other once more before my dog passes away.

But, either way, he has been My Amazing Dog and always there by my side on trails or fetching sticks until he taught our younger dog, a corgi to fetch and then by age 12 he gave fetching over to her.