Bob Thomas Writes

. . .THE DUTCH. . .
Sometimes, late at night, when the house was quiet. I would hear her “thump” to the floor from her favorite chair.
She would do that when she woke up and found nobody sitting nearby. She had to know where her “Mom” was. . . as if to say, “It’s my job to watch over her”!. . . she would ignore me and snuffle through the house until she found my wife in another room. And then she would find a comfortable spot, usually on one of her many blankets, afghans or towels that were scattered through the house. . . Turn around four or five times, and lay down. Always with an eye toward “Mom”.

Her name was Duchess.
She was a Yorkshire Terrier.

She came into our lives in 1982. She was with a young family that had just had a baby. They found that raising a baby and a puppy was just a little too much to handle, so they decided to give us one of them!
We took the puppy.

Her name, according to her AKC registration, was “Roberts Carolina Duchess”. I was a little more accepting of her after I heard her name. . . since my name is Robert! I figured it was some kind of omen, or fate, or karma or some other new age term, that brought us together.
I had not been a “dog” person before I met my Wife. When she said she wanted a dog, I resisted. I finally relented by saying, “It can’t shed, it can’t be big and I’m not paying for it!”
I think I relented because she had given away her dog when we got married. She did it for me because I wasn’t a “dog person”. . . and she loved me more than the dog. I have suffered because of that decision everyday since she dropped ‘Lady’ off at the vets so they could find her a new home.

I didn’t know how much my wife loved her animals at that point in our lives. I didn’t know that she had made the ultimate sacrifice for me and for our marriage by giving away “Lady” to a stranger. I didn’t know you could love a dog as much as that! Or that anyone could love me that much.

Now I know, and I can only imagine the pain she suffered then. . . for me.

When we got Dutch I decided that I wouldn’t get too attached to her. She was, after all, just a dog.
The first night in our home, Duchess cried for hours from her box in the kitchen, and kept us awake. I relented. . . she could sleep in the bedroom, but NOT in my bed! I put her box next to the bed and turned out the lights. She cried. I put my hand on her to quiet her. She climbed up my arm, across my shoulders and found my Wife. She snuggled down for the night, and remained there for the next 16 years!

She immediately wormed her way into my heart. She would curl up in my arms and sleep for a few minutes. Then she would go and curl up in my wife’s arms and sleep for hours!

Dutch, as she became known, was a typical young puppy. She chewed her way through most everything in our house. Including the sheet rock walls! She even peeled the wall paper off the kitchen wall from the floor to the ceiling by grabbing a little piece of paper down next to the floor and backing up until she had pulled an eight foot long strip of paper off the wall! When she was young we would keep her gated in the kitchen during the day. Invariably though, she would be lying on the couch sleeping when we came home. Sometimes, just to entertain herself, she would pull all of our shoes out of the closet and delivered them to the living room. They weren’t chewed up, just moved! For a while she would walk up to the wall and start chewing a hole in the sheet rock! We never did find out why she did that! But, she eventually stopped. When she was little I discovered that, just by carrying her down the streets of town, I could attract a small crowd of admiring ladies!. . . That made me wish I’d had her when I was a bachelor!

As the years passed by, Dutch raised me to be a pretty decent dog owner. She taught me how, and when, to scratch her just the right way. She showed me what unconditional love was all about. And she even helped me learn to avoid Dalmatians! A dog, in her opinion, that was too stupid to have so many big teeth!. Her only scars were the two canine teeth scars on her butt. . . left by a neighbors Dalmatian! After that incident, she learned to ‘low walk’…at least that’s what we called it. She would get progressively lower and lower as she approached the Dalmatians house on her afternoon walk. By the time she got there she would be hidden behind the curb and almost dragging her belly on the pavement! She wasn’t a coward, but she wasn’t stupid either!

When we got her, at four months old, she was a little black ball of silky fur…as she grew older her coat changed to blond and black and eventually to all silver and gray. When she left us she was a gray haired little lady.
The night we had her put to sleep, my wife held her in her arms while her vet of 15 years injected the poison into her.
She went to sleep. . . a peaceful “puppy” sleep that we hadn’t seen in years. In recent years her aches and pains had not allowed her to lie in one position for very long. She would toss and turn and circle several times every few minutes. . . trying to get comfortable. As her little heart came to rest we cried for her. We told her that we loved her. We wished her a happy after life. We felt her ascend to the arms of God.

She is in puppy heaven now. She is not in pain. She knows why we did what we did for her.
If she could, she would kiss us on the nose to tell us that she loves us. That she understands.
She always understood. Our shouts, threats and slaps with a sheet of rolled up newspaper never diminished her love for us. She knew that these things were just something she would endure until she had us trained. She loved us unconditionally and nothing could change that!
And now she can go tearing across God’s back yard . . . running in endless circles of joy. . . and looking for a duck, (her favorite victim) to chase. Not to catch, just chase! As she crossed over the horizon she would stop and look back at us, as she always did, with her ears perked up and her eyes gleaming with excitement, as if to ask,
“Are you watching me? Is it O.K. for me to get this far away from you?”
Yes Dutch, it’s O.K.
We know where you are.