A few months after the White German Shepherd I inherited from my late father died, I was lucky to take in the smartest dog I've ever met, a German Shepherd named Lady. She needed a new home because she understandably misidentified a Chihuahua puppy living next door as a menace, and killed the poor thing in front of two children. Fearing for the lives of the rest of the litter, Lady's owner decided the best thing to do was find her a new home.

Lady thrived here on my 42 acres. Plenty of wild game to terrorize, as well as the Frankie the mailman and Ralph, from UPS. Lady did not like delivery services. A few months after her arrival, my sister visited from Florida with her family and their 2 dogs. Some sort of beacon must have been broadcast, the morning after their arrival a pack of 5 dogs showed up. They all deferred to Lady, so everyone got along. I didn't feed them, they all looked like they had homes. Collared, well fed and had the red tattoo indicating they'd been fixed. Four eventually wandered away but one stayed. A dark brown lab mix that got along well with Lady, she had no tags and a canvas of my area found no owner, so I kept her and named her Tramp, which seemed right on many levels.

The two became fast friends, with a shared interest in hunting, wresting and chasing cars up and down my lengthy driveway. I counted the carcasses or remains of at least 13 different animal species, including a beaver tail and spine, several deer bones, box turtles, various rodents, a rat snake (from which several egg sacs flew after splitting open when Lady and Tramp used it to play Tug-of-War) and in one sad case, a kitten who was dispatched to the next world with stunning efficiency by Lady. Their favorite times were following the tractor as it mowed our hay, pouncing on the birds and rodents killed by the mower blades. The hay fields were their favorite hunting grounds all year as well.

Lady's aggression got her into trouble. She had to have her tail amputated after getting dragged under the rear end of a car turning around at the head of our driveway. A year after that her left rear leg got mangled in an encounter with a small pack of coyotes. She became well known at our vet's office. 

Late last summer Tramp started reverse sneezing and coughing, as if something was obstructing her breathing. Around the same time I noticed when petting Lady she would move her body until my hand was petting her hind quarters. I thought maybe she was having phantom pains where her tail used to be. I was more concerned with Tramp. The vet thought it may have been congestive heart failure, then a fungal infection, then chronic rhinitis. She seemed to respond to antibiotics and stabilized a bit, then in mid december Lady started having problems with her back legs. She had difficulty getting to her feet after lying down, then unsteady on her feet at times. Her blood tests indicated either an infection or possibly cancer. She regressed quickly, essentially bed ridden by New Years Day, unable to move her rear legs. On January 4th, after a night of heart breaking agony, we had her put down. The best guess our vet had without a CT Scan was a cancerous tumor on her spine. We also figured out that the main reason she was moaning so much was that she was holding her bladder. Good girls don't pee in their bed, and she was a good girl. When she died she soaked the blanket on which she laid.

Tramp was heart broken. She chased the van while it drove Lady away, and spent hours outside the next few days looking for her. I found out later many vets encourage you to bring the other dog in this situation so they would have closure. Had Lady not been in such agony I may have brought Tramp. In retrospect, I wish I had. Tramp's coughing/sneezing got worse, and her breathing become more and more labored. We decided on a CT scan with her, and the results confirmed our worst fear, nasal adenocarcinoma. Normally treatable with a combination of radiation and chemotherapy, it had progressed to far into the bones separating the nasal cavity and both the eye orbit and brain for radiation to be possible and chemo to be effective. She was given 3 months to live, but after reading up on it, I guessed it would be much sooner. I was right. Barely three weeks after the CT scan, this sweet girl who only wanted to be loved, fed and petted, no longer even wagged her tail when petted and just looked at food with disinterest. Yesterday afternoon we made one final trip to the vet, and you could tell she sensed it. She met her fate calmly, even with a bit of relief. 

One of many lasting memories of Tramp was the intense interest in watching television she developed in the last 3 weeks of her life. I remember the very moment, when she was walking under the TV in my bedroom and happened to look up, did a double take and froze, mesmerized. It wasn't just a brief interest in the moving shapes and sounds, she watched. If it was 2 talking heads she would look from one to the other when each spoke. I would show her nature shows on Netflix that fascinated her, one memorable scene where 2 lions were chasing a giraffe had her on the edge of my bed, ready to leap into the TV to join in on the kill. Other times she could barely be torn away from the TV to eat, once hurrying back to see the fate of a rabbit being chased by a fox when her food wasn't quite ready. It makes me so sad remembering the intense look she'd get on her face watching TV.

It's very quiet in my house today. I don't know if I'll ever have another dog, the sense of loss and sadness is hard to take.

RIP Lady and Tramp

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