As far back as I remember, I have always been a dog person. I like cats just fine and we have owned several, though I am allergic to them, I prefer dogs. The first dog in my life was Princess. Before we moved into town, we lived North of the city in a place we called the Colonels. It was between Colorado Springs and Monument and West of the highway. Since I was young, I don’t remember a lot of details about the place except that it had an irrigation ditch running on one side and near to the house was an apple orchard. It was a good place for small kids to play outside with no traffic to worry about. However, we had rattlesnakes. One day, my brother and I were playing outside, and Princess started barking and raising a ruckus. When my mother came out to see what the fuss was about and got to Princess, she saw the rattlesnake coiled close to where we were playing. She killed the snake, and I am sure was grateful to Princess for alerting her of the danger.
Another hazard of living in the country was porcupines. I don’t know what it is about porcupines and skunks, but dogs just can’t seem to leave them alone. I am not clear about all the details, but one evening Princess came in with a face full of porcupine quills. My dad got the pliers and, leading Princess to a doorway, had my mother hold the door closed on Princess’s neck. He then pulled the quills out of her face and mouth while the dog and both of us kids cried.
After we moved into town, I remember watching Princess have puppies in the basement of the house we were living in on the Westside of Colorado Springs. She was a wonderful dog, and we had her from the time I was one or two years old until after I entered Junior High School (Middle School now). After Princess, we didn’t get another dog, but we had a cat.
I didn’t get another dog until after I married. My wife and infant son lived in a small, rented house in Colorado Springs when we got Bathsheba. She was a black German Shepherd puppy full of energy. Though not purebred, she looked like it. Unfortunately, she either jumped the fence or someone took her from our front yard, and we never saw her again after having her for only a short time.
Not long after we lost Bathsheba, we got our next dog, Fidora. She was a Saint Bernard Mix. A large, very furry dog that we did not allow in the house. I have a lot of regrets about Fidora. She was a good dog but had to stay chained outside since we did not have an adequate fence even after we moved into our current home. When I think about it now, I feel like we really deprived not only her but also ourselves of the companionship she would have offered. Occasionally she would get loose. This was only a problem when the neighbor a few houses up the street would go by and she would act aggressively toward him for some unknown reason. He thought it was because they had several cats, but I’m not sure that was it. I think dogs are like people and just don’t get along with some people or some other dogs. When we put Fidora down because she had cancer, it caused a lot of sadness in the house with the kids crying and mourning her passing.
We have since had four more dogs, including our current dog, Bailey. I will spend a little time on each of them in the upcoming blogs. But we did allow each of them into our home as a part of our family, which is what I remember my family doing with Princess. Dogs have so much love and companionship to offer it is wrong to not allow them into your life if you are going to own one.
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