The novelty of having the patio door open in June was not lost on me on this not-exactly-tropical island where summer usually only deigns to occur on the occasional weekday in July. Plus I haven't had a patio screen door in about 15 years.
The problem with having rampaging labs is that they are really hard on screens, especially if one of those labs is in fact a 100-pound Newfoundland and Labrador with ginormous paws who is not afraid to use them, and when you are taking too long to find the pause button on the remote so you can go let him inside.
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| Hearts ©2016 no plot |
If you were able to resist that sweet face (I certainly couldn't), you would not be able to resist the power of that tremendous paw, shredding metal screens like they were tissue paper or simply demanding the pats that you were legally obligated to provide him under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Hearts amendment, 2007).*
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| Pwning this couch since 2007.** ©2020 no plot |
Hearts came into our lives by stealth. We would never have taken on a dog of his size at that point in time*** given that we were in canine recovery, having endured an entire year of crazy in the form of Shadow, the lab-husky mix who made us understand why some people abandon their children on doorsteps.
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| Shadow contemplates his prey, an evil gleam in his eye. The shoe was never seen again. ©2005 Mike who probably didn't know what he was getting us into.**** |
Shadow was approximately four months old when we got him, having spent most of that time living on the parish up in Natuashish. One day, he decided to run into Mike's house and used his powers of cuteness to enthrall Mike who in turn convinced us that all this adorable pup needed was a good home (to trash) and some unsuspecting people to love (traumatize). He was a sweet dog but he had no off-switch, which was problematic in a family that is constantly misplacing its on-switch. He tore a terrible path of mastication through our lives, shredding dog toys, child's toys, slippers, shoes, boots, window screens, screen doors, coffee tables, etc. He dug under every fence, slipped every backyard tie. He was a very difficult dog to live with until one day, he got very, very sick, very, very fast, and then he up and died. We were devastated (but also relieved).
It was a while before we could muster up any enthusiasm for getting another dog. But after 5 months of not knowing when he was well off, Her Father started visiting the SPCA websites again, convinced that if he avoided puppies, he could find an older dog whose personality and behaviour would be more readily apparent, easier to assess; a calm dog who would fit into our lives with less disruption and decidedly less carnage.
Which is why we decided to adopt Sylvie, a stray who had been found wandering the streets of Mount Pearl.
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| Sylvie, aka the Trojan Horse. ©2007ish no plot |
She was quiet, she was calm, she was approximately one year old. She was everything we were looking for.
She was also not spayed but they didn't think she was pregnant...
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| .... ©2007 no plot |
HF came back from the vet's in early May to announce that Sylvie was about to become an unwed mother at any minute - any minute turned out to be 9 p.m. that night. I desperately googled birth plans for dogs and was horrified to see that it involved a lot more than hot water and towels.
I looked at Sylvie and wondered how dogs managed to give birth before they could read about it on the internet. I decided to let her get on with it, since she probably knew more about it than I did, but I left the webpage open just in case. She gave birth in this very room not five feet away from the computer. I expect she checked it once or twice when we weren't looking.
The first pup to arrive was named Special by SWDNO who, at 5-almost-6 years old, was given leave to stay up past her bedtime to see the puppies being born. She named the second pup Hearts. We have no idea if the first two pups were in fact the ones who ended up with those names because it was at least two weeks before we were able to tell them apart. They were all ninja black, or so it appeared at first.
The third puppy arrived after we had convinced SWDNO to go to bed, informing her that Sylvie was done having babies when clearly she wasn't. Four and five arrived sometime in the night after HF used the same ruse on me.
The next morning I woke up at 6 a.m. and jumped out of bed like it was Christmas morning and Santa had finally brought me exactly what I wanted. Up to this point, I hadn't really felt that connected to Sylvie, particularly since she made it clear from the start that HF was her one true love, but we finally proceeded to bond over our joint love of adorable puppies; all was finally forgiven regarding the birthday lamb chop stolen off my plate one month before.*****
My mother was amazed that I was willing to take on the hassle of caring for puppies, but it wasn't really any more surprising than my willingness to care for SWDNO. It was a bit overwhelming at times but at least Sylvie was more helpful in cleaning up poop than certain other co-parents I could name, even if her method was unexpected and rather disturbing.******
Even though we couldn't tell them apart or even determine their sex (we checked - it seriously could have gone either way), we decided on names for the other three pups; I called one Third of Five. HF named one Jasper and Drama Queen named one Princess.
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| Puppy pinwheel, ©2007 no plot |
As the days passed, it became clear that a) they were all boys but Hearts, Special, and Princess were totally man enough to deal, and b) the pup who we were constantly finding several feet from the puppy pen in the dining room had brown leggings. We decided that this was Third of Five.
Then one morning we came down to discover The Great Escape in progress.
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| Great escaping is exhausting, ©2007 no plot. |
It then became clear that Third of Five was in reality the reincarnation of Steve McQueen, tasked with reconnoitring the mysterious world outside the prison camp puppy pen to prepare the way for his brothers' ill-fated escape attempt.
Eventually, we noticed that two pups had white toes on their hind feet. They became Hearts and Special. You could only tell them apart by picking them up because Special had two white hearts on his chest and Hearts had only one.*******
The SPCA said they would help us find homes for the pups when they were old enough - they would have taken the whole family back if we wanted but I just laughed in their faces, or I would have if I had been speaking to them, because MY PUPPIES!
HF said we should find homes for all the pups but he was clearly delusional, because MY PUPPIES! I knew we couldn't keep them all, especially when we noticed the size of their paws and realized they were going to be Big Boys!, but giving all of them up was unthinkable. I ended up having to bribe HF by finally agreeing to buy a gas-guzzling SUV, global warming be damned, so we could transport twice as many dogs as we had originally intended.********
I thought choosing which one to keep was going to be hard, but in the end I didn't have to make the choice. Hearts and SWDNO made the choice for me.
Every time SWDNO entered the puppy pen, she would sit down on a low stool and there would be a mad puppy rush towards her. She would then pick up the one who got to her first; nine times out of ten, that puppy was Hearts.
Then SWDNO told us we were keeping Hearts so we just agreed.
It broke my heart to give up the others but I have never regretted our choice.
Having two labs seemed to have saved us no end of trouble with inappropriate chewing. Steve McQueen's adoptive mother regaled me with a long list of the things he destroyed, including a cell phone, but Hearts and Sylvie were mostly happy to chew on each other, only occasionally doing the naughty by chewing pencils, pens, tissues, but not much else.
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| Little girls make excellent chew toys, ©2007 no plot |
Also we had to keep the kitchen doors closed or Hearts, aka Jean Valjean, would steal some bread from the-not-so-safe-after-all furthest corner of the counter or raid the garbage can. Then he would sneakily hide around the corner by the patio door to snack on his booty out of sight of the casual passerby. He would never steal anything off the table or counter while you were watching but if you were foolish enough to leave him alone, all bets were off.
Hearts was also a chocoholic, starting with his first Christmas when he found and demolished an entire bag of Laura Secord chocolate balls that had been buried in a bag of Christmas presents. Then there was the time he found the Easy Bake Oven cake mixes that had been stashed in a bedroom closet and he decided to test them out. And the two children I still owe new hoodies after he gnawed a hole in their pockets to get at the tasty sweets inside. If chocolate had been a controlled substance, Hearts would have had a great career as a sniffer dog at the airport.
For the first year or so, the dogs would stalk us in the mornings, waiting for the first sign of life to start pestering us to give them breakfast. Hearts would stick his big, old nose in your face if you merely cracked an eyelid at him. Because we are expert dog trainers, we eventually cured them of that habit with the simple command "It's not time yet, go lie down!" (patent pending). Rolling over became permissable once more until a more reasonable hour, but once your feet hit the floor, it was "no time to pee, give me my Dentastix!"
We had to walk them every day or there would be wrassling, wrassling that would rearrange the furniture. Sylvie revealed that she was not exactly as calm as we thought, turning into a psycho-killer every time we ran into another dog when we had her on leash. All other dogs must die! she'd snarl, also, pickups, vans, and SUVs (irony) because she's a committed environmentalist.
Hearts, on the other hand, loved every dog he ever met. So much so that several times he pulled me off my feet in his eagerness to get to them. He was always so disappointed whenever the other dog refused to be BFFs. Although why anyone would get nervous about 100 lbs of muscle heading straight for them dragging a middle-aged woman in his wake, I'll never know.
Once we switched to a Gentle Leader, a leash which went around his nose instead of his thickly impervious neck, I was able to walk him without incurring further road rash.
It was also highly inadvisable to let him know that you had any notion of taking him for a Chinese cooking pot (wok) or an opposite of cow (woc), or make any sudden moves towards the stairs or breathe in his general direction after supper, or it was Hammer Time. Navigating down the multitudinous stairs in a split-level is no easy chore with a wooly mammoth dancing at your heels like he's trying out for Soul Train.
When Hearts felt joy, the very ground trembled.
Fortunately for us, if it wasn't breakfast or walk time, Hearts was the chillest dog I have ever met. He loved to just hang with the fam; weekend mornings usually found the no plot family gathered in the living room, both dogs sprawled on the floor, Hearts soaking up all the available rays.
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| A furry sundial, ©2020 no plot |
His favourite position was horizontal but this did not mean he would not bestir himself to demand the attention that was his due. Sylvie might lie idly by, waiting for someone to notice her, but Hearts would accost you for love as you lay hove off on the love seat, obediently sitting beside you and smiting you with his mighty paw until you complied. But before too long he would slump to the floor, all the while expecting you to contort yourself to continue with the pats (op cit. Charter of Rights and Freedom).
I'm not sure when SWDNO got the brilliant idea that Hearts would make a good Therapy Dog with St. John Ambulance but when she did, I agreed wholeheartedly. A little halfheartedly, when I realized she was too young to do it and I would have to be his handler. I was all for her working on her social anxiety by talking to absolute strangers but not quite as keen on working on my own.
I like people a whole lot better when I don't have to rack my brains for words and...sentences and...stuff... Whatever. The point is, Hearts was always up for meeting other dogs and being worshipped by humans. In fact he insisted on it.
I decided that since I was always willing to talk to anyone who was willing to admire my dog, I could somehow manage.
Hearts passed the Therapy Dog test with flying colours. He had no problem with walking into a roomful of dogs and letting them live (unlike Sylvie). He accepted that he couldn't be their BFF, for now, and allowed me to keep him from sniffing their butts (but secretly plotted to do so at his first opportunity).
Tremendous bangs and crashes from dropped metal objects fazed him not a bit. When the examiner put a blanket over his head and made weird noises at him to simulate unexpected behaviour a dog might encounter, Hearts just stuck his head under the blanket and licked him on the nose.
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| I love a man in uniform, ©2018 no plot |
We started off visiting a nursing home but I quickly learned that parallel parking an enormous canine next to a hospital bed was not easy to do, especially when the dog in question was more keen to give into the lure of gravity when the pats were light and tentative. We started visiting a dementia ward because the women there were ambulatory and more likely to pat hard enough to keep him happy. Even those who weren't interested in patting him would smile delightedly and ask questions, usually the same ones, over and over.
SWDNO's high school and university were a little more to his liking, teenagers and young adults being more likely to worship him on their knees, sometimes 5 and 6 at a time. There was plenty of dog to go around.
No matter where we ended up, Hearts always got excited when he saw me wearing the St. John's Ambulance t-shirt that meant we were about to go get some pats.
But even when the pats were not up to scratch, I think he still liked to go and just be with people. He had a knack for showing up when I needed him, in any case. Whenever I begrudgingly got around to doing the melon-farming dishes, he was usually there lying on the kitchen floor behind me, giving me moral support.
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| Helping with dishes and mopping the floor with his tongue which was too big for his mouth anyway, ©2018 no plot |
When Hearts turned 13 back in May and Sylvie probably turned 14, I worried he wouldn't be with us much longer. Thirteen has been an unlucky age for too many of my dogs, Jason, Mugsy, Becky, probably Snuffy.
| Birthday boy and girl in hand crafted hats by SWDNO. ©2020 no plot |
It still didn't make it easier when HF came home from the vet's with the news. Hearts had started to slow down on our walks again - we thought his arthritis was paining him but it was cancer. There wasn't anything to be done that wouldn't put him through needless pain that wasn't likely to do much good anyway.
We hoped for more time but less than a week later, I was standing with him at the end of the driveway, waiting for the mobile vet to come. I had shown him his leash each day since we got the diagnosis; he got excited every time, but each day our walk was a little bit shorter. Today, the driveway was as far as he would go.
Two little blonde girls from two doors over were riding their bikes past us, as they had done many times before, but suddenly, one of them stopped in front of us and hopped off her bike.
"Can I pat your dog?" she asked for the first time ever.
He lay down at my feet and soon there were two blonde heads leaning over him, giving him pats. I don't know why they felt the urge to pat him that day and not any other day they had seen us walking him. It may have been because they had lost their own dog not long before.
Whatever it was, it was some kind of therapy for me to stand there in the warm sun, watching him do the job he was born for one last time. It made us all feel a little better.
He must have pats. All the pats. © no plot, HF, SWDNO
*To tell the truth, the old screen door was shredded by Shadow, the dog we owned before Hearts came into our lives. But since Hearts's favourite way of summoning his staff was to whack the window or door he saw you through with enough force that you feared the glass would shatter, it didn't seem prudent to install the new screen when we got a new patio door
**Note the paws which are almost as big as the head
***absolute lie, see sweet face op cit., photos above, also we are idiots
****or did he? Hmmmmmmmm
*****since she never repeated the offence, she was able to plead her belly and the charges were dropped
******mama dogs eat puppy poop, gross but also extremely efficient
*******Princess had a white "V" on his chest and Jasper was completely black. Since Hearts had two hearts (one inside, one out), that makes him a Time Lord
********Three-times as much dog as it turned out since Hearts fully grown was almost twice as heavy as Sylvie. The vet thought the pups were part Newf, confirmed by a DNA test later on. Sylvie is mostly Labrador; Hearts was a genuine Newfoundland and Labrador.
