Mine has to come in the form of a story.
In the year 2000, when I was 13, my first dog died.
We were very very sad as could be expected.
A year later, we still hadn't got a dog. One of my friends has a farm and one day a Blue Heeler Kelpie Cross wandered onto his property. She was so malnourished you could see her ribs and the pads had been worn off her feet from walking. She also had substantial injuries to her face. Obviously she must have fallen off a ute (pick up truck) or a truck without her owner realising. For three days they kept her, advertising that she had been found and took her to the vet. Their dad is a famous horse trainer so had good free access to professionals and was pretty good himself. After three days she started to act happy again and, it turned out, she loved little girls. She wouldn't leave my friends sister alone. But, unfortuantely, they already had four dogs so they asked if we wanted to have her, at least until they found the owner.
So they dropped her off. Usually when you get a rescue dog they've been mistreated and are wary of people but this dog was not worried at all. She had a sniff around, met our chooks (chickens) and then went to sleep. I named her Maggie and spent a lot of time with her. While not unhappy, she wasn't energetic. Turns out she was still exhausted from her experience. One day she got up, said hello to me, when outside and had a poo out the back. Then BANG! She sprinted around the yard for no reason. Full of energy. Super happy.
Over the next coupe lf months she started getting fatter.
And fatter
AND FATTER!
The vet confirmed it. She was pregnant with at least 6 puppies.
Over the months I grew to be Maggie's person. She was my dog. (For once my mum, who is very good with animals and kids, wasn't the centre of the universe). I taught her new things but I could never get her to "speak." In fact, she never barked at all for the first 5 years we had her. Eventually we discovered her previous career. She was a sheepdog. We took her to my uncles and when she saw his sheep she headed out with his own dogs. She responded to all the commands and was very good at it. My uncle said that he could easily get $8,000 for her but could get it up to $12,000 depending on her training and age. (We don't like my uncle...)
A few other things in her training we found hard. She refused to come inside. It took us dragging her to get her in. As soon as she crossed the doorway she was happy and would promptly lay down and sleep. We also couldn't get her to eat because we didn't know her command word. We trained her the whole time we had her on a new command word but it never really stuck. Luckily, she just loved food due to her time starving so eventually she just ate.
Then, on December 1st, my mum, dad and all the cousins went to watch the cricket for my cousin, Chris', birthday. My brother played computer and I was watching TV. By this time Maggie had learned how to open the doors and wasn't worried about coming inside. So I heard the door open and then I felt Maggie grabbing my arm with her mouth and she pulled. It was like from Lassie! It was one of those "Bark Bark! Come with me! Old Pety fell down the well!" It was unmistakable, "Follow me." So I got up and followed her into the garden. We have half an acre. She took me over to a hole she had dug and inside it was something looked like a dead magpie. Maggie was wagging her tail furiously in that way dogs do that sends their whole body wagging with it. The dead magpie moved and I realised it was a puppy! I picked it up, it was half the size of my hand, and took it to my brother. We got a blanket and put the puppy on it in my room. That was a mistake, because Maggie took that to mean, "This is where you are having your puppies." In a flash, she had crawled under my bed.
We called Mum to figure out what to do. We were excited, not panicked. She told us to go next door and get our neighbour, an Aboriginal lady in her early thirties who was training to be a nurse. Veronica, the nurse, became the midwife and she also had all her family in town too from Central Australia. So we had a dog under the bed, propped up on bricks, at least 10 kids, myself, Mark and eventually Mum showed up with her sister. Her sister was hungover from the night before and all the blood didn't help her.
7 puppies were born, then the placenta (which Maggie quickly ate) and then, mysteriously, another puppy came after it. The puppies were all healthy except that last one who seemed a bit stupider than the other puppies. Probably didn't get oxygen for a little while.
We started selling them twelve weeks later at the cost it took for medical bills. But no-one wanted the super boisterous big one. That was the puppy I picked up in the garden. So, we kept her. I love the fact that I was the first person to touch my dog in it's life.
The only mistake we made with that dog was letting my dad finally name one of our animals. He called her Pinhead. We call her Pin or Pinnie.
Pinhead was highly energetic and learned a lot from her mum. She even learned to round up our chickens even if she did kill one. She thought it would be fun to pick one up and run away from me. Chase me! That is the only time I've kicked a dog. We later found her in a cloud of feathers with the neigbours chickens. So we tied her up, put chickens under he collar and hit her with their carcasses. It's not nice but she has never been able to eat raw chicken since.
Maggie died early last year from cancer. We think she was two years old when we got her so that would have made her fourteen. Well, we put her down... It was that that killed her but the cancer caused too much pain for he to do the things she enjoyed such as walking.
One thing I learned is, if you have two dogs, show the body of the one that died to the other one. It's heartbreaking to watch but it's very important for closure. Otherwise they always look for the other dog.
So, now we only had Pinnie. She got fairly depressed but we got her out of it by doing lots of walks and having someone always home. (The one time my crippling depression has been good.. I'm home most days) But eventually we decided she needed someone to keep her company. To keep her on her toes. She needed a puppy. But my brother beat us to it.
My brother picked up a rescue dog. This was a special type of rescue dog. Often farmers will shoot any dog that doesn't meet their standards. This is one reason why I have a general dislike of farmers. This farmer was good though, he would sell any unsuitable sheep or cattle dogs for $300 through an animal shelter. The benefit of getting these dogs is they are partly trained. The dog was named Jib, which my brother's army friends find extremely funny... some inside joke about my brother. He is a red cloud kelpie and had been a cattle dog for 3 months before the farmer decided he was too lazy to train. And for a kelpie, he is lazy. A kelpie at one year old can run 60km a day. Jib lays down in the shade during our walks all the time. Not because he's unfit, but because he relaxes while he waits for us to catch up. Once again, he is already trained and is very good with our chickens. Pinnie is fairly old now and takes short cuts in her chicken duty... She rounds up one chicken and leaves the rest to Jib. The problem is Jib is used to working as a team and Pin walks through all the chickens to find one specific one that she rounds up.
Pin is old, but happy. She still walks around the block and Jib is a puppy... so.. yeah... This sums up Jib
http://img0.joyreactor.com/pics/post/auto-comics-dogs-animals-347908.jpeg
I love my dog
More than I love you
But you may fade
My dog will always come through
Maggie left - Pins bum right
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/Zoomah/2014 and 2015/IMG_1223_zpse5d90de7.jpg
Pin 2 years old
http://s7.photobucket.com/user/Zoomah/media/PC300040.jpg.html?sort=3&o=394
Pin now
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/Zoomah/2014 and 2015/IMG_1927_zps1fdad409.jpg
Pin now with the one chicken that she rounds up. She has made it so comfortable that it tries to roost next to her bed.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/Zoomah/2014 and 2015/IMG_8270_zps6d1f312a.jpg
Jib
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y290/Zoomah/2014 and 2015/IMG_6220_zpsde0dd040.jpg