Emma, Beasley and Graham at the Beach on a Windy Day

As I have written here before, I have three dogs: Emma, a 13-year old Beagle/German Shepherd mix, Graham (my red-headed stepchild), a 12-year old,  female red Basset Hound, and Beasley, my first puppy, an almost 9-year old male, tri-colored Basset Hound.

I adopted Emma from the Burlington, Vermont Humane Society when she was 5-months old. She was the second dog I had ever had on my own (the first was Chlöe, a Blue Tick Hound/Beagle mix, who died tragically when she was just 2-years old).

I adopted Chlöe the year after I graduated from college. Our family dog had passed away during Christmastime four years earlier. I went through those four years without a dog in my life, but I decided that even though it would complicate things, it would be worth it to have another dog.

The shelter workers in Rutland, Vermont told me that there was just one puppy they had on-site, but that she was going to be put down the next day because of a bad cause of kennel cough. She was also blind in one eye (a litter mate had blinded her in utero). One eye was brown, and the useless eye was a ghostly blue. I asked to see her anyway. I remember that they put her down at the end of a long hallway, and she ran full tilt at me, jumping onto my lap and kissing my face.

And so, I took her home to my apartment, treated her kennel cough, and loved her despite her flaws. She came back with me to Burlington when I spent a few months with my older sister, while I was saving up for an apartment there.

Time passed. I had moved  into an apartment in Burlington, Chlöe in tow. I worked in a box office, and had the opportunity to attend a concert a few hours away. My sister volunteered to watch my dog so I could go.

The trip was uneventful, but Chlöe’s stay was not. She had dug a hole under the fence in my sister’s backyard and had crossed the very busy street to play with some children. Someone had seen her loose, read her tags (I had my address and phone number on them), returned her to my apartment across town, and had tied her up in the backyard on her long lead. My sister went out looking for her, found her at my apartment, drove her back across town to her house, put her in the backyard, and went inside briefly when she heard her two-year old son crying. Chlöe dug another hole under the gate to go play with her new friends. This time she didn’t make it across the road. The person who hit her never stopped, but the woman behind them did, and brought her to the local vet, DOA.

When my sister tracked down Chlöe again, the vet told her that the death would have been instant, so at least I had that consolation. That, and I knew Chlöe had had a wonderful (albeit short) life with lots of time spent in the woods, swimming in lakes and ponds, and being loved.

It was one of the worst afternoons of my life. I went to pick up my dog from my sister’s house, and she had to tell me what happened. It still seems surreal to me. I don’t think that I had ever experienced that kind of grief and guilt. It still hurts. I had actually arrived home the night before from my trip, but had waited until after I got out of work the next afternoon to pick up Chlöe. The “what-ifs” were terrible to deal with. I thank the  friends I had at the time with helping me cope. It was a very difficult time.

I waited a couple of months, but my house and life were terribly empty without my dog. I was alone in the house. I would be cooking in the kitchen, drop something on the floor, tap it with my foot, and no one would come. That was probably the worst; it was such an unconscious action that I would get sideswiped with grief. I would walk in the door after coming home from work, and there was no one there to greet me. I would go swimming and there would be no one to go with me. My side was empty in my bed, where before I had that little doggy body next to me or by my feet. Walking down the street alone was so boring now.

I started going to humane societies and shelters around Vermont. Some were terrible places that made me cry as soon as I left, out of guilt and anger. I still remember one place that was all concrete, with moats of dog waste running down each side of the pathways leading to the cages. All of the dogs in the cages seemed desperate, filthy, and hopeless. I wanted to be able to save all of them, but I knew I needed to find just the right companion for my life.

The shelter in Burlington was clean, the people were friendly, and it was very organized. I decided to adopt a puppy, simply because I wanted to bring someone into my life that needed me completely, and the wounds were still pretty fresh from Chlöe’s death. I knew that older dogs needed saving and companionship too, and I felt bad about only looking at the puppies. However, I knew that I needed the vulnerability and dependence of a puppy to be able to begin a relationship with so as to not compare them to Chlöe. More importantly, I also wanted to be able to train them from a very early age not to dig so what happened before would never, ever happen again.

Then, one day I went to the “Puppy Room” in the back of the shelter’s property. In one of the pens they had one purebred, 10-week old Beagle puppy and two 5-month old Beagle/German Shepherd mix puppies that were sisters. One was barking at me insistently, and the other simply put her paws up on the wire enclosure and looked at me intently, wagging her tail. I still have that picture in my mind. I was very reticent about getting another hound, even one mixed with a German Shepherd, as I wanted to be able to have a dog that wasn’t prone to digging and who would be much more obedient of a dog than Chlöe was. As much as I loved her, she had been a giant pain most of her life. In retrospect, she might not have gotten all of the exercise that she most definitely needed. She once dug up and ate all the garlic bulbs that my sister had planted, she ate the legs off of my chairs, ate my rugs, chewed ink pens on my bed, got into the garbage, would take off running when off leash–you get the picture. The irony was that she had been finally calming down when she passed away.

I decided to give the Beagle mix a test run in the yard in back of the Puppy House. She spent some time sniffing around the yard, chasing after a ball I threw for her, and then came to me when I clapped my hands excitedly towards her. I asked her if she would like to come home with me and be my dog. I decided that she said yes.

I had to wait two long weeks before I could take her home; it seemed like a year. They had to wait until she was old enough to spay, wouldn’t adopt her out until she had been, so I picked her up from the vet’s office when she was finally ready to come home. I started training her right away, taking her to obedience classes where she was a star pupil (that dog would do anything for food), went on long hikes every few days, walked her every day, crate trained her, gave her bones and toys to chew on, and did everything I could do to raise a very good dog. She was so smart that she was housebroken within three days. She was very eager to please.

In one of the obedience classes was a woman who worked at the Humane Society in Burlington. She was there with a Golden Retriever that she had adopted, and she remembered Emma (she had been known as “Critter” at the pound) from when she lived there. She told me that Emma’s sister had also been adopted (the barking dog), and gave me the information on the people who had done so after checking with them first. A really fun moment in my life happened when Emma was about a year and a half. We got together on a “play date” with that family and Emma’s sister. We all went to Shelburne Bay, a great area for dogs, right on Lake Champlain. Emma was fully trained to be off leash by that point. It was so heartwarming to see the sisters reunite. I took many pictures, and it was obvious that she had a loving home, with two parents and their little girl. Emma’s sister was terrible on leash, was still very bark-y, and could not be let off leash for fear of her running away. But we all still had a very good time, and I was secretly proud of my decision to choose Emma over the other dog, as well as all of the work I had put into training her. Plus, I thought Emma was much prettier.

I have had Emma in my life now for 13 wonderful years. She is much more mellow than she was as a puppy. I used to bring her on five-mile hikes and then come home, where I would flop on the couch and she’d fling toys at me to play with. We now walk a mile and a half every day (with her adopted siblings) and when we return, she goes right upstairs to take a nap.

I am grateful for all of them. I am grateful for my experience, and I am a better dog owner and person for it. I’ve learned that a tired dog is a good dog, dogs who have lots of toys won’t chew on your stuff, and a trained dog will live with you a lot longer and be a much better companion and dog citizen. I still think of Chlöe, and I look forward to being reunited with her on the Other Side. But until then, I am certainly enjoying my life with the wonderful dogs I’m lucky enough to live with now. And, I am never lonely.

Tags: adoption, digging, dog pound, dog training, humane society