Tales from the Road Series
‘Back in the day’ before I was married, I had taken a job as a full time pastor south of Raleigh. I ended up renting a 80-year-old farmhouse in Garner, off Mechanical Blvd. It was 10 acres surrounded by Oak and walnut trees. Fully furnished with dishes and even, what I called, the ‘Elvis Presley bed’ – a HUGE eastern King bed with a massive red velvet headboard. The house was old, big, and I was alone.
So, I needed a ‘dawg’! I mean, southern boy, in the backwoods he’s gotta have a ‘dawg’ right? So I pulled out the paper, (that would be newspaper) and looked up the classified ads. For today’s generation that would be ‘craigslist, ebay,’ etc. I found someone who was giving away puppies. They were some form of German Shepherd mix. I called, got the address and directions, (no GPS in those days) and headed out. I ended up with the ‘runt’ of the litter. This little 15 pound, totally white German Shepherd/Husky mix had me from the moment I saw her. She had full size ears that hung down over her face and was so cute I couldn’t stand it.
We had a tough first night.
She cried and I cried. I was upset because another ‘life’ was totally dependant on me and I didn’t realize the ‘pressure’ I was going to feel in taking care of another. She cried because I guess she was scared and this wasn’t home yet. I felt bad for her.
The next morning it was time to hang out with her and come up with a name. To me she looked a little bit like a pig, with the pink nose and small little self. I thought of a farmer calling out to the pigs, “SUEEEEEEY” and that led, for some odd reason, to the Buddy Holly song ‘Peggy Sue’.
Name – DONE!
Peggy Sue Kennon.
She grew fast and house training was first on my list. This dog could make a huge mess. I grew up with dogs so this wasn’t an issue for me, teaching one to let me know when she needed to go outside. Back in those days, I had a touch lamp and I taught her to touch the lamp with her nose when she had to go. Good plan right? Maybe not because she learned at 2 am she could wake me up for whatever she wanted by turning the light on the brightest level possible. 3 touches with that nose of hers and I made noise. I would turn the lamp off and she would turn it right back on, wagging her tail with the ‘let’s play’ thing.
I would call out “PEGGY…stop that” which she promptly would ignore.
Back then, I was a sound sleeper and by the time she was 80 lbs, she would ‘sneak’ into the bed at night. I was single and the bed was the size of Rhode Island. I never knew till I woke in the morning, as I came face to face with a dog nose when I rolled over or a paw situated on my shoulder, that she had got in the bed.
“PEGGY!! …GET OUT OF MY BED!”
Peggy was stubborn…
I have never met a dog that had to ‘win’ no matter what. I am not sure if this was the Husky or where it came from but when she decided something, it was hard to change her mind. One our our first ‘rounds’ of difficulty came when she was eating. Maybe she got it from me, not sure, because I do remember stabbing someone’s hand with a fork when they reached over to sample my plate, but wherever she got it from, when she was eating, you better not approach…
EVER.
The first time this really happened is hard to say but by the time she was 80 lbs, when she got ‘upset’ her hair on her neck would stand up, she would stop moving, start growling and glaring straight ahead as if she wasn’t looking but the signal was clear. “Come near me and I will rip out your gizzard”! When it happened I got pretty uptight and it caught me off guard. Growing up with small dogs was nothing like this. However, after a time, it got old… okay, let me be honest, it got old fast and before I knew it we were in a routine where she was the ‘alpha’ and I was not. Though no one at the time explained this to me, my ‘head of the house’ sense of ‘who’s the boss’ took over. I didn’t like being scared of her. This had to end.
This behavior of hers just pissed me off, and one day she got on my LAST nerve. I was tired of being afraid in my own home. We had done a lot of ‘play’ fighting where we would roll around and rough house and it was clear she knew when we were playing every time. However, when she got her panties in a wad again about the food stuff that was it. I grabbed her, rolled her over in a ‘controlled fit, raised my voice and then bit her around the neck gently, while I was growling… Not the most most thought out moment of my life but effective.
I shocked myself. (I also made a note to myself… don’t let anyone really piss you off Jeff, it isn’t going to work, the whole ‘bite in the neck , growl’ thing.) However, for Peggy, she got very still, her demeanor changed and problem was solved. She completely submitted and gave in. It was clear she didn’t expect this either! Every once in awhile she would forget but all I had to do was lean close, growl in her ear, and her tail would wag and the world was good.
I wanted to take Peggy everywhere with me also.
One time, I had to borrow my brothers old Nissan straight drive pick up. It was a stripped down model with plastic everything and rubber matts. Nothing too delicate and no carpet whatsoever. Peggy had eaten and this was going to be one of our first car rides. I opened her door, she jumped into the passenger seat and looked out the window ‘seemly’ content. As we started driving I noticed that she ‘seemed’ a little ‘concerned’. The sun was doing down and we were going north into downtown Raleigh. Every car, every noise was new to her and instead of relishing in the ‘new’, hanging her head out the window, she twitched at everything new. I reached out, patted her head, called her name and she seemed fine. About 5 minutes later she stuck her neck out a little further and ‘coughed’…sorta. “Hey girl, you okay?” She looked and me and turned away. Another cough gagging sound came out. I was beginning to wonder what was going on. Now she kicked into a full bore, sound like a cat hocking up a hairball when all of a sudden, she turned toward me, then threw up EVERYTHING across my lap, the dashboard, the floorboard etc. “OH MY GOSH, DOG!” I was screaming as the steaming pile of pre-chewed food warmed my arms, ran down my pants and seemed to ‘stick’ to everything. I was on Capital blvd at the time and weaving back and forth trying to ‘run’ from this nastness. I can’t believe I didn’t get pulled, but I am pretty if we had of been stopped by a police officer, once the window came down, the officer’s one “whiff”, would have turned him away. “Sorry man, my dog got sick…”
PEGGY!!!!
As time rolled by, I got married and we went through a ‘number’ of issues between Peggy and the wife finding peaceful ground. We took Peggy everywhere, camping, beaching whatever…as long as she hadn’t eaten but when she got ‘fixed’ on something she was hard to move in any direction other than her own so we had to keep close tabs on her or she would run.
The one constant in the universe is change, and when we had to move more then once, it became more and more difficult to find places for all of us to live. The day came when I had to let Peggy go. One of our doctors needed a dog and was interested in her. We took her over and it was clear things seemed to be a good match. I cried like a baby because I was loosing my first dog, Peggy. As anyone will tell you, your first pet is a real learning ground and we had spent a number of years growing together, watching out for each other.
Two years went by and we had moved a few times since leaving her. Finally we settled in a old camp house way out Highway 50. There was 100 acres of woods around us and it was very quiet. I had often thought of what Peggy would have thought of being in a place like this? Then one day, I got a call, from the same doctor who let me know, their other dog was getting old and Peggy was basically beating up the old girl. They were afraid Peggy would really hurt or possibly kill the old family Pet. He wanted to know if I wanted her back before he put up a add in the paper. I can’t tell you how fast I drove over and got her.
It was a fantastic reunion and I cried all over again to get her back. Very quickly we realized that having the open run of the place wasn’t a good idea so I purchased a small electric fence unit to be placed in a small fenced in yard. I would take her for walks often but she spent time in the fence none to her liking. The one problem was with her temperament. She was really a good dog and understood that the fence meant pain and she shouldn’t try to go through it. However, Peggy being Peggy, she had to ‘test’ the fence, ALL the way down the wire. She would hit it, yelp, back up and go down a few feet, looking at the wire the whole time, then hit it again, yelp and work her way down till the fence and wire got to the house.
Poor thing…she wasn’t the brightest bulb in the fixture, but after a while I turned it off because she was no longer ‘testing’ it.
I came home one day and found her missing. I was kicking myself for turning it off. I searched for hours and was so afraid that she had gotten out on the highway and been hit. But later in the evening, she showed up on the front porch, a little worse for the wear and looking for food.
Fence went back on. However, now, when a wild animal would come within smelling distance of her nose, she would either forget about the fence or just decide the pain was worth it. I started coming home and find her sitting outside the fence, waiting for me to let her back in. There was just no stopping her. I had seen her literally climb fences like a ladder and knew once she decided something, there was no containing her. Over, under, through…she was going to chase whatever was out there.
I don’t want to say I had become complacent, but she came back every time. Except one time… she was gone a full day and I was beside myself. We’d been together, except for the two years with the other owner, for 10 years. Late that night, in the dark, I heard a ‘whimper’ from the front. Peggy was lying down near the fence trying to get back ‘home’. I rushed out to her and saw blood coming from her mouth and from her hind area. I called the 24 hour Vet on Glenwood Avenue and gently put her in the front seat of my truck.
When I arrived I carried her in like a baby with her whimpering the whole time but licking my hands. I stayed through ‘most’ of the examination till the x-rays. The Vet showed me that her tail bone was totally broken, she was going to need surgery, will need to be in a diaper the rest of her life, will not have control of her bowels, will need to be carried most places and will spend the rest of her days ‘contained’. When he said that I knew what was coming.
I had to decide if I would let her live in that state or put her down. Up till that point in my life it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I went into the room, sat with her for a good 20 minutes talking, crying and praying. I knew I had to put her down. It’s not worth putting in writing but let’s just say, when we were done I grabbed the nurse beside me and cried on her shoulder for a long time.
I wasn’t ready or hadn’t thought this night was going to end like this so I asked them to hold on to her till I could decide how to bury her. She was my first dog which I owned and I didn’t want her going to a landfill. By the time I had made my decision a week had gone by. I found a spot in the woods where I had seen her rush into the trees more than once and thought that would be a great place to put her remains to rest.
So, here is where Peggy, even in death, proved difficult. I didn’t think about this but I had a full size dog, in a huge plastic bag, which had been in a freezer for a week. Basically, I had a 80lb block of ice! Her body had been bagged and put on it’s side in the cooler. She was basically frozen standing up. The bag was huge and stiff. I could barely get her in the truck since she was fully extended, head up, tail up, legs straight out. I went from being mortified to irritated. By the time I got home, it was getting cloudy and rain was coming.
I drove over to the spot for burial, pulled out the shovel and started digging. Roots! It took 30 minutes of back breaking shoveling to get a hole big enough, or so I thought, for Peggy. I went back to the car and tried to have some form of ‘serious, ceremony’ type of thing around her burial but picking up a frozen, standing up, tail up, head up 80lb Peggy wasn’t really working. I said a prayers, thanked God for Peggy’s life, then with the best attempts possible, laid her on her side in the grave.
Ummmm….she didn’t fit…So I tried another way, I put her head down into the hole I had dug but that left her plastic wrapped frozen tail pointing to the moon. “Okay, that’s not gonna work”. So, I tried putting her tail first and that ended up with a perfect, plastic covered shape of her head sticking out of the ground. The sun had done down, it had started raining, and I was using the car headlights to light the grave site. I tried laying her on her back,…4 paws in plastic sticking up. All I had were images of Peggy’s plastic wrapped frozen remains sticking out of the ground no matter how hard I tried. So, now I pulled her out, laid her aside, and started digging more. This went on for an hour. Dig, attempt NO… dig more, another attempt… NO… I can’t believe this.
By the time I dug my way to China the deed was done. I had her buried and covered with a small cross to locate her site.
I walked back over to the car, covered in mud, wet in the rain, sat down in the front seat, turned the key and….the lights when out. The battery was dead…
“PEGGY!”
Peace on your Journey this week.
