All gone now, in an apartment, with just the one cat left, Wink. She;s tried to kill me several times over the 12 years I've had her. I'm serious. When she doesn't want to kill me, she's very smootchy.
The first dog I remember, Gus. One mean guy, I was the only one of us in the house he never bit. He tried. One of the biggest purebred Dachhunds I've ever seen.
Gus had kidney issues and was put down when I was 8, my allergy doctor assured my parents I would get much healthier after he went, he was totally wrong, so just before my 9th birthday, I picked out this runt of the litter who would end up the biggest purebred Beagle I've ever seen, Farfel:
Farfel was a busy and loud guy to put it mildly. He dropped dead just before he would have turned 12, right after getting into it with a dog I was trying to adopt. He ended up going back to the shelter after destroying all my furniture. Farfel went out a winner, pinning the other dog, a Beagle 11 years his junior. I ended up adopting Farfel's daughter, Blackie, and a yellow Lab named Joe.
Joe had an endless series of health issues from almost day one, but he made it to 13, and Blackie made it to about 14. When they were about 9 years old, I got talked into who would end up being my favorite of all of my dogs, Gus II, original name, Popeye, due to his eyes popping in and out when he chewed on stuff. There were 3 Dachshund Popeyes in the neighborhood, so we went to Gus. Gus looked like this when we got him:
As he got older, he changed a lot:
First he got longer and longer, he ended up the same length as Joe was, who weighed 96 pounds. Gus was about 25 pounds and insanely skinny, his thick fur covered up a lot of his scrawny build. Then he got taller, and ended up about an inch and a half shorter than Joe was. The head got bigger and bigger, but he stayed really skinny, and then suddenly, the metamorphasis happened. Almost overnight, he went from about 40 pounds to 75, and except for his head, all muscle. His head was huge, along with his neck, which was with a tight tape around it 27 inches. Most people, including vets guessed he only weighed 50 pounds or so, but picking him up was like picking up a bag of concrete mix. His head looks about the same size as Joe's in this pic. Not even close:
Gus at about 10 years old, this pic makes his head look small. I could fold my thumb under my hand and put the whole thing from my wrist bend in his mouth and not touch the back or the sides except near the front under his nose.
Gus was a member of the "F.A.T. club" at a Columbus area vet's office. F.A.T. stood for "Finger Amputatin' Teeth" and Gus eventually became the first member of the 3 + sign level, after the vet watched him destroy and swallow a big rawhide toy in 17 minutes. Gus made it to almost 14.5 years old. We lasted 2 weeks without a dog, and we got two littermates, King and Molly. Molly was a nice enough dog, but King was nicknamed in puppy class, "The Evil Genius" and it totally fit. He couldn't have cared less about the stuff that we were training him to do, all he wanted to do was mess with some target pup he would fixate on when we came into the training place. He would stare at the victim pup, make all kinds of crazy noises, and basically make the other puppy into a nervous wreck, and anytime the trainer or I would not pay attention, he would run over and jump on the other pup. His usual target was a Golden Retreiver pup twice his size.
We had a cat, Orville, who the older dogs ignored, and Gus was big pals with. Molly ignored Orville, but King was mesmerized. Orville could bully Gus, but King was not the same kind of dog at all. King was, well, King. Unafraid of almost anything. Orville didn't understand King was trying to play with him until a few weeks before he would be gone at almost 17. They had fun for a couple of weeks and then Orville was gone.
King and Molly lived to just short of 14 years old. Even in King's senior years, he was the boss of the doggy day care he went to. He loved the girls working there. Molly hated it, so she rarely went. He was known for his "he takes no crap from anyone" attitude, and one of the trainers from his puppy class days hadn't seen him in almost 12 years, but knew him instantly, just from the attitude. King just wanted 4 things at day care, to sleep, smootch with the women working there, be left alone, and have his treats first. He would walk over other bigger dogs when the treats came out. If he got annoyed by another dog, and he was often annoyed, he would chase and flip the offender onto it's back, and pin him to the ground. A lot of the time, the other dog would start yelping even before King caught him There was no dog that could outrun King except for a couple of Sighthounds, and they were terrified of him. His stare alone would make a lot of dogs too nervous to really challenge him. When he was 13 and a half, they had to move him into the little dog area, as his enemies knew the King was fading. This pic was about a year before the end. He was still able to catch anything at that point, but the end of his reign as Boss was near.
I almost took a Pit Bull my friend was fostering, but I have mobility issues and a dog needs to walk, so it's just cats now. I lost my cat Timmy a while back due to cancer, and Wink seems to be OK as a single, so that's how it's going to be for the near future anyway.
