Happy Birthday Shadow!

Our dog, Shadow, turned 9 years old this week. We've never celebrated her birthday before. A couple of years ago, Grace decided that we needed to celebrate doggie birthdays and she had a party for Velvet. Last year, I guess we were too busy, but this year we actually remembered to do it for Shadow on Monday.

Grace thinks that April 6th is a good birthday for Shadow. We don't know her exact birthday either because she is also a rescue dog, but I know that on June 2, 2000 she was about 8 weeks old, so April 6th is just about right.

We don't talk about our dogs much on our blog (unless they get into trouble!) But, the truth is, they are a huge part of our lives. I guess I should tell a bit of their story. This is for the journal.

Shadow and Velvet were our first "children" and we did treat them like that until we got real ones. (they're all ankle biters in the end though.) When we were first married, we lived in a downtown apartment in Salt Lake and couldn't have a dog. I left, what I considered to be "my" dog with my parents. David and I did a lot with Spud when we were dating and first married. We said as soon as we had a house, we would take him in. We bought a house about 18 months later and went to retrieve Spud from my family. Little did we know that he was actually my dad's dog! The two of them didn't even make it through a weekend before I had to return him home.

So, we started dog shopping for ourselves. We whole-heartedly believe in rescuing animals so we started with the shelters and the Humane Society. The first dog we looked at was a sweet, calm, black lab mix named Patrice, I think. We took her outside to "try her out" and noticed that she didn't want anything to do with us, nor did she listen to us. Still, we thought she was so nice that we might consider her. As we walked through the shelter looking at dogs, this other black dog just kept barking at us. It was such a turn off that she wouldn't be quiet, we almost didn't even think about her. But, something about her caught our interest, so we took her out too. She was unbelievable. She bonded with us instantly, completely engrossed in everything we said or did. She paid no attention to other people or dogs, only to us. She was very smart and very obedient and athletic too. We finally decided that she must have been barking because she was trying to say "pick me! take me!"

We brought "Muffin" home in mid-March 1999. She was quickly renamed Velvet for her velvety soft ears. They do feel just like black velvet fabric. She was only 9 months old and did have some serious issues from her previous family who had ignored her and must have kept her locked in a basement given her absolute terror at going down any sort of basement stairs. She was also in the middle of the laborador "puppy chew" phase. Between the psycho problems and the puppy chewing, she was a tough dog to have at first. She destroyed so many things from chewing on the wiring under my truck, the siding on the house, the 220 volt connection to the a/c outside, ANYTHING plastic or basket-like in the house. It was a real problem and we were gone all day and she was very lonely and bored.

Still, she was such a good companion and so well behaved if we were home and so SCARY smart (as our friend Steve Guenther put it) that we thought if we ever came across her breed combination again (black lab/border collie), we would get another dog just like her. We knew we could rehab the rest of Velvet's past with time.

So, it was June 2, 2000, the last day of school for the year. I was driving home in the early afternoon feeling such a sense of relief and happiness that I was through with another school year and had the whole sunny summer ahead of me. I didn't have anything to do for the afternoon since David was still in school, so I aimlessly drove towards the mall. I saw the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary van pull into the mall parking lot and followed it. They proceeded to unload several crates of rescue dogs into the center of the mall to be adopted. One of the crates had a litter of darling black puppies. The sign on the cage said "black lab/border collie mix." They were all named after the Dukes of Hazard. Bo, Luke, Duke and Daisy. There may have been one more, I can't remember. Immediately, I was interested in the only female, Daisy. She was A-DORABLE. Having not seen Velvet until she was 9 months old, I wasn't sure what she might have looked like as a puppy, so I believed the sign about the breed mix. It was exactly what we had been looking for and hoping for. And, this time, we would have a puppy that we could train from the beginning and avoid all the psychological problems of an older rescue dog that were starting to take their toll on our patience and checkbook.

I picked up Daisy and asked to take her for a little walk. They allowed me to take her for a walk inside the mall. I sat down on a bench in the mall and called David to say that I was holding a puppy and I was probably going to bring her home. He said "you do what you think you should do." So, I did it. We adopted Daisy.

After naming Velvet, David had admitted that he would have liked to have a dog named Shadow, so we decided to re-name Daisy and call her Shadow. And, boy, did the name fit too. She followed all 3 of us around like a Shadow, especially me and Velvet. Velvet asked us "why did we get a dog?" And she's felt that way about her ever since. She thinks of Shadow as her dog.

Shadow went everywhere with me. She either sat on my lap or on my shoulder in the car. She slept in the nook of my neck and as she grew eventually slept curled around my head. Finally, she got too big for my pillow and had to be sent to the foot of the bed. Both of our dogs used to sleep on our bed. Again, until we had kids who got in bed with us, then the dogs got sent to the floor. There's only so much room in a queen bed!

We discovered something else as Shadow grew up. She isn't a border collie or a lab. She's mostly a flat-coat retriever. She might have a bit of something else in her, but all of her traits and behaviors match that breed. We have decided that it is a pretty great breed too. She is one of the most gentle, mellow, and sweet creatures I've ever met and is quite smart too without the drive to get into trouble that Velvet has.

We took our dogs everywhere we went when we lived in Salt Lake. They loved to go to both our parents' houses. They got to play with Spud at my parents' and they got to play with Grandpa Earl at David's parents'. We took them hiking and on trips.

When we moved to Massachusetts, they got to go on a big airplane ride and ride in huge crates under the plane. That was quite an undertaking to get them here!

Since we have lived here, they haven't gotten to go so many places. First of all, we really don't go anywhere very much anyway. They do get to go to their doggie "spa" when we travel. We exchange dog sitting with some friends here and they have a pretty sweet set up for our dogs when we leave. We know our dogs get pampered beyond belief over there.

We also do live in a very walkable area and before we had 2 rugrats of the people sort, David would faithfully take the dogs for nightly walks down the river trail. But, now that we have so much going on in the evenings with us and both kids, the dogs have gone another notch down. We do feel badly that they don't get out as much as they used to. The girls and I do our best to play with them here and get them exercised in the yard. Grace and Hattie just love having them around the house. They are endlessly patient and forgiving of all of the kid "love." I don't think Shadow and Velvet mind all the extra food that falls from the kids' plates either. I love having them too - I have always felt so secure with them guarding our house and our family. Shadow is always 2 steps away from me no matter where I go in the house.

Our awesome canine friends are now 9 and 11 years old. They are both in really great health and pretty good shape. They both still run without pain and have lots of endurance and agility. We hope to keep them happy and healthy for as many years as possible. Grace and Hattie are utterly bonded to them and we don't remember life without them.
So, Happy Birthday to you this week Shadow!