Our Abby is a full blooded Yellow Labrador retriever and we
have the papers to prove it. My husband
had great plans to breed her when she matured.
I didn't agree. I could only
imagine that we would have more puppies than we could handle and it might be difficult
to sell them. I had three small
children. I didn't want any more
workload on my shoulders. He wouldn't
back down and before we knew it, she went into heat for the first time.
Having had no experience with a female dog before Abby, I
was unprepared. We have a fenced in yard
so Abby was safe under my supervision. I
guess when a female dog goes into heat; the male dogs from miles around can
smell her. So for the duration of her
heat, we met about 10-15 new dogs we had never seen before! We would come outside and there would be a
black lab lurking along the fence line.
Another time, there would be a brown and white mutt out there or a tan
cocker spaniel. There would be several
all around the fence at once! And that
is when we met Smokey for the first time.
Smokey is one of the mutts. He is short, brown, black, white, and very
funny looking. He “smiles” at you when
he sees you….a weird, teeth chattering affair.
I can’t explain it, but it is funny.
Smokey belongs to some neighbors up the road, who we have
become friends with over the years because we have children close in age. The attention from all those male dogs (who
surely did not have papers to prove their worth) put fear in both my husband
and me. Neither one of us wanted mutt
puppies that REALLY would be impossible to find homes for. So we made an appointment and had Abby spayed
that very week. The male dogs stopped
coming around. Smokey still came. We joked that Smokey was her boyfriend. He was just too stupid to realize she had
been fixed. We found out much later that
Ol’ Smokey was actually
neutered. I guess he saw all the other
dogs coming and wanted to see what the hype was.
When Abby got a little older, she developed a bad
habit. She began climbing over the fence
and running away. She would always come
back home when she got tired of running, but it was worrisome. We lived on a busy road and some people get
angry if a dog runs onto their property. Too often, we saw her up the road or
on the nearby golf course running with Smokey. She came home once after an
adventure needing five stitches in the bottom of her paw. Allowing her to run
simply was not safe. Then we began to
notice a pattern. She would only run
away when Smokey came to visit. We
bought her an invisible fence with a shock collar so she wouldn't run away any
more. Smokey still came to visit. He would come strolling down the road and
then grin at her and do a little dance. It
was as if he were trying to get her pumped up to run along with him. She couldn't go. She would get real excited to see him, they
would sniff each other. He would do his
little dance again, but she would not go with him. He would eventually run along without
her. Still, though, on some occasions,
the battery in her collar would be dead, or she wouldn't have it on. She always seemed to know when that was the
case and off she would go for several hours.
Always, she would come home “dog tired.”
Sometimes Smokey would come into the fence and the children
would close the gate and make him visit for awhile. One time, he came into the
house because the back door was propped open.
He went under our bed and wouldn't come out for hours! His owners weren't concerned. Smokey often wanders. His home life is a little different from
Abby’s. He lives in a dog house and
comes and goes as he pleases, whereas Abby is spoiled and sleeps in the house spending
a great deal of time in the air conditioning. Smokey actually got hit by a car
once; he limped home and his owners never took him to the vet. He limped for a while, but there were not any
superficial wounds. After all these
years, history, and their different backgrounds, one thing has become apparent.
Abby and Smokey are truly friends. The running joke is that they are boyfriend and girlfriend.
They
are both around ten years old now. They both have quite a bit of white on their
faces. Abby doesn't act like she wants to run much anymore. Smokey seems to hang more closely to his own
home, too. We do still see him wander, but not nearly as often. Recently I drove our truck up to the
neighbor’s yard to drop something off.
Abby rode in the front seat with me.
Smokey was home that day, though.
He was happy to see his girl. He stood up and grinned. She wagged her tail and barked a hello. I didn't dare let her out. They would have run away together for sure.
These are our most recent photographs of Abby. We don't have any of Smokey. It would be risky to get those two together for a photo....surely they would run off!
