After the death of Ivy we had a small hope that Cupcake would take her place. But that dog was a useless as it was large. In fact, she had a taste for quail. After demolishing their cage, she ate what quail she could catch. (Those that escaped lived in among the purple hulled peas nearby until predators wiped them out.) She barked and cried all night and had a dangerous look in her eye when she regarded our dearly beloved cat, Tabby. I would have exiled her immediately, but my youngest daughter had already established her dog rescue compound in our back yard and we were committed to raising the nine puppies remaining.
So, in about the space of a week, I'd gone from losing the one dog I owned to having ten of them. In the next Sunday School class I related the story briefly and assured my classmates they could put a hold on their prayers regarding any more dogs for us for some time to come.
We raised the puppies until they were eating solid food and then began finding homes for them. I had a fondness for tan one that was similar in color to Ivy and my daughter selected a black one with white forepaws that was particularly fuzzy - like a bear cub. Hence we acquired Goldy and Baby Bear, but not quite.
In late December we had found homes for Cupcake and all but three of her puppies. There remained Goldy, Baby Bear and a puppy we named Oreo because she was black with a white belly. I intended to find a home for Oreo, but a suitable owner hadn't appeared at that time. Then tragedy struck, not once but thrice.
In later December a freak tornado ripped through the next-door neighbor's yard and tore off half the roof of their house while they sheltered in the windowless pantry. Thankfully no one was hurt thought their house and my barn were totaled. We were spared a direct hit, but the strong winds also decapitated a small, newly built barn I'd made and shifted the remainder off it's foundation since I hadn't had opportunity to secure it yet. The shed's corner struck Goldy who had been sheltering in its lee during the storm and pinned her by her forelegs in the mud.
I'd been downtown and sheltered at the public library when the tornado sirens blared. Shortly after that I came home to see what the damage was. The fence was down around the barn, and the horse, Sassy, and sheep, Stinky, were loose. Fragments of building were everywhere on what resembled a battlefield. Twisted metal and large splinters of wood were impaled all around the path of the tornado and debris were littered everywhere around on the rain soaked ground. Glumly I noted that our trampoline had gone aloft and not returned to earth intact, but brightened to see that the house was only missing some shingles and glass.
Baby Bear was unhurt and greeted me in a subdued mood in the back yard. I heard some whimpering and didn't see either Goldy or Oreo immediately. I followed the sound of whimpering and found Goldy with only her head and hindquarters sticking out from under the corner of the barn where it had been driven into the mud by the storm. I felt sympathetic pain and horror as I imagined what awful injuries the mud and twisted lumber must conceal. I briefly debated taking a gun and ending her misery, but decided to investigate more thoroughly.
Inside the ruined shed I saw Goldy's small paws protruding from under the baseboard of the barn's frame and knelt to feel them... They were still warm and they wiggled when I touched them. That gave me some initial hope and I began carefully digging around them with my hands. Outside Goldy whimpered quietly as Baby Bear watched silently from the tilted and twisted doorway. The rain soaked hay above me in the loft dribbled water on my head and back as I worked. in the cold drizzle Oreo came in from somewhere and watched my progress silently.
The mud piled up between my legs as I dug and gradually both of Goldy's forelegs appeared. Feeling them, I discovered they were whole, and my hopes rose. Soon I cleared all the dirt from around them. Then I moved back outside and after comforting the pinned dog, began digging with my hands around her shoulders and torso. It was cold, messy, wet work, but after about twenty minutes I freed her and pulled the puppy out from under the shed. She stopped whimpering and licked my face. I looked her over carefully and thankfully found no cuts and felt no broken bones. I was very happy and relieved. Setting her on her feet, I let her try to walk. She limped painfully, but could move about. I assumed she'd recover, but took her to the veterinarian just to be sure.
Dr. Kennington x-rayed and examined the puppy and discovered only a fracture in one leg. I was about to take her home when a vet tech approached me, having heard previously I had been giving away puppies. He wanted her as a gift for his girlfriend. I had planned to keep her for myself, but we already had two other dogs. I suggested he could have her if he paid the vet bill, but he explained he had no money. So I paid the bill myself and gave her to him as a gift Another customer was watching this and remarked that he too would have wanted that puppy - it was a fine looking dog. So, empty handed and lighter in the wallet (our insurance didn't cover animals) I returned home.
Back at home my daughter and a State Trooper met me and explained that a teenage driver had run their car into our escaped horse. I helped him pull her from the roadside ditch where she stood frightened and confused and we temporarily shut her up in the topless, tilted barn until another, equine, vet could come to us. The horse recovered, but was permanently injured in her hind leg and later lost her foal. The driver never apologized and tried to sue us for the damages to her dad’s car she had been speeding by in. However, we live in a free range area , so it was clearly her fault. Still this meant another three digit vet bill on top of being unemployed and wracked by a tornado. It wasn't my best day.
But, we still had Baby Bear, Oreo and Tabby the cat. We had reason to be happy.
The dogs were only pups, but they did try to guard the poultry, if only for their own purposes. For earlier they and their siblings had broken en-mass into the turkey pen and killed the few that had survived all the other challenges. So, I knew what sort of temperament they possessed. They also seemed to understand their role as guards of the barnyard, though they seemed OK with supplementing their kibble rations with an occasional egg or chicken. Despite all this, we still had a few chickens left and these attracted the coyote.
For several nights the coyote would circle around our place at night, hoping for an opening to snatch a chicken. I never saw it, but would rush out at night when the dogs would bark, rifle and flashlight at the ready. But the beast always disappeared into the darkness before I could catch sight of it. I tried setting out a tape player with coyote calls and bait, but it wasn't fooled by these. After spending several cold nights perched in the cold, windy loft of the barn I gave up trying to catch it that way.
Then one night I heard the puppies barking furiously and the coyote snarling. I dashed outside with my rifle to see Baby Bear barking and running anxiously around the yard. Then she lead me in the darkness to the neighbor’s field where I discovered Oreo laying injured in the recently plowed dirt. Blood was on her side and she was crying. I brought her into the light where I discovered the coyote had bitten her around her chest and punctured a lung. It made me angry to think how our landlord wouldn't let dogs in the house and the barn was ruined. So we had no safe place for the dogs. We made Oreo as comfortable as we could in a box with a baby blanket and then took her to the emergency veterinarian clinic.
The veterinarian there examined Oreo and announced she could probably save her, but the surgery would cost $900, cash, in advance. We didn't have that kind of money and they wouldn't arrange credit. So sadly, we had to say our goodbyes and let them put Oreo down with an injection rather than let her bleed slowly to death. My daughter was too distressed to watch. Though it grieved me too, I held Oreo in my hands until it was over. To their credit, they didn't charge us for that and even offered to dispose of the body for us. I couldn’t imagine treating the brave puppy like a sack of trash. So I wrapped her in the bloody blanket and we buried her next to Ivy in the east garden the following day in a little wooden box I made.
That left us with Baby Bear and she soon grew happy, healthy and big enough to hold her own with the coyotes.
Then along came Goldilocks.
My daughter had a friend from school that had a golden retriever puppy they couldn't manage. I agreed to look at the dog and her dad brought the puppy over. It was a beautiful, loving female golden retriever about the same age as Baby Bear. They immediately got along well and she showed real interest in us too. It turned out that the owner was a former colleague of mine from a manufacturing company in town where we'd both worked about 15 years ago. We were glad to meet again and shared news while the girls introduced the dogs. When it was all said and done it was a done deal. Goldilocks had a new home and Baby Bear had a step sister. They became inseparable friends. I knew I’d made a good decision when a passerby offered to buy Goldilocks from me for a good sum, explaining how scarce but popular they were in these parts.
The two dogs played endlessly together day after day as spring turned into summer. They grew large, strong and healthy and were ideal as outside dogs. Together they exercised and entertained each other and kept the varmints at bay and we didn't have another loss to the wildlife from the poultry.
Baby Bear was my daughter's favorite as Goldilocks was mine. When she was still fairly small, Baby Bear would travel with my daughter for visitation with my ex-wife. Goldylocks stayed home and guarded the flocks or visited overnight with a friend’s dogs. Eventually Baby Bear was too big for her apartment, and she stayed home those weekends.
About that time Baby Bear and Goldy were getting old enough to go into heat. Male dogs came about checking out the opportunities. So with a good friend’s encouragement and financial support we decided to spay Baby Bear over my younger daughter’s objections. There’s a supposedly low-cost spay-neuter clinic in town where we took her. The bill was much higher than advertised and the scar was larger and sloppier than we would have liked. I didn’t spay Goldilocksfor I had plans to breed her later, but BB was only a mutt and proved to have some undesirable qualities.
That's when the big trouble started.
We came home one weekend, a chicken was missing and there was a pile of feathers that looked familiar on the lawn. I suspected Baby Bear because she'd been involved in the disappearance of some turkey poults earlier, but my daughter was adamant about her dog's innocence. She insisted it had been a coyote, but I found no tracks or other traces of varmints around the house or fields.
Two weeks later we came home again to find two more chickens missing and two more piles of feather. Again I suspected Baby Bear, but there was no hard evidence. On the next trip I left her with a friend for the weekend and left Goldy in charge. No chickens vanished so I felt I'd identified the problem. I couldn't see boarding Baby Bear every time we left town, so I stated building a dog pen. I had no spare money, but I had about forty feet of chain link fence and some lumber. This was enough, but required some time and labor.
Baby Bear must have known what was coming for more than once I saw her chasing a chicken around the yard. She was getting her licks in while the getting was good. She also began chasing Tabby, and a neighbor complained about a missing cat and had i.d.'d a black dog with a purple collar,.
Then we came home another time and found Goldilocks chowing down on one of our best egg producers. I scolded her and tied her up for a week in isolation as punishment. We never actually saw her kill a chicken, though she I suspect she was glad enough to eat Baby Bear’s kills. We had to do the same with Baby Bear twice after that while I worked on building the pen with help from a friend's son. Baby Bear didn’t like being isolated, but she seemed to understand what it was about.
Meanwhile, Baby Bear was otherwise a wonderful, loving dog. She and Goldy learned tricks together such as leaping over a fence, shaking hands, sitting on command & etc. In fact, she excelled at jumping and would leap up on the new trampoline where Goldy couldn’t reach and tease her step-sister from her secure perch. As I worked in the yard she would come and push her head under my arm to be petted. Often she would roll on her back to present her tummy to be rubbed - a favorite custom. If my face was down at her level, she would try to lick me on the face, her way of giving kisses. It amazed me that the same muzzle could be so gentle and kind to me and tear another living creature to small gory bits.
Finally, the weekend before Christmas, the pen was done except I had no latch for the gate, finances being what they were. We had to leave that afternoon so I went to catch Baby Bear to put her in it. I added a doghouse I’d built earlier and put hay and a large stuffed bear inside to make it cozy. A bulk feeder and bucket of water made it complete, but Baby Bear wouldn't have it - she ran off. We were running late for our bi-weekly trip, so I told my daughter to catch Baby Bear, put her in the pen and securely tie the gate with rope before we left.
I was in visiting a friend the next day when I received the fateful call.
A neighbor, the Sunday School teacher from the local church, had found Baby Bear dead in the road. Doing a great kindness for us, he took her out of the road and buried her behind the barn From what I gathered, she'd worked the rope loose and escaped. It happened the same day we left, so she hadn't taken long to escape or be killed. No one claimed to have done or seen the vile deed. I didn't tell my daughter until she returned.
When I returned home and went back to the pen I found the stuffed bear shredded and the rope unraveled. Baby Bear had not liked being confined. I could understand that, since she roamed free most of the time. But she'd paid the ultimate price for that afternoon of freedom.
The neighbor had accidentally buried her off of our property in the next door neighbor’s pea patch, which was due to be plowed up soon. That didn't seem like a good place to leave her. So I made a coffin and reburied her on the other side of Ivy in the east garden. It was not a pleasant task! I made a small metal plaque that read:
Baby Bear
2009-2010
and buried her with a bone, a toy, some words and a prayer thanking God for her life and hoping for no more losses. Goldilocks watched all this in solemn silence. She sniffed at her step-sister’s still frame and later at the coffin as I buried it. She seemed to understand what was happening, but also seemed on edge, even afraid and wouldn’t come close. Goldilocks clearly missed her companion, was less playful than before and more desperate for reassuring attention. She tried to engage Stinky the sheep in the games she’d played before with Baby Bear, but it wasn’t the same.
As we rode home after the New Year, I broke the news to my daughter. She was sad and thoughtful, but it cheered her up to think we’d go looking for another puppy to take Baby Bear’s place and she promised to try to be more protective of the next one. In the end, Baby Bear was generally a good dog, not the best, but we loved her and miss her.
