We share our lives with 11 dogs. They are always around. They get in the way when I’m trying to walk, or come up the front steps with my arms full, or cook. I remember my mother used to get mad at our dog when I was growing up for being “underfoot” when she was trying to cook. Sometimes I get pissed at them, but they know that my bark is worse than my bite.
They are inspirational beings.

I truly believe that they can read my mind. They know how I feel and when I want them to do or not do something. A lot of times they’ll ignore this knowledge, but they know. I’ll give a short biography of each over the next few posts.

Ajax
AKA Monsieur Le Boo Boo or Handsome Boy

Ajax is the old man of the crew. I found him and his brother on the side of the road (actually another dog, “Smiley”, whom I was walking at the time alerted me to the presence of these two puppies) in 1996. He was about three months old and starving. The puppies probably belonged to a female dog who had been hit by a car a few days before a few yards down the road. When I took Smiley home, I got in my car and went back to get them. I was going to bring them to the shelter the next morning. We already had two dogs. But overnight I fell in love with them. Ajax cracks me up every day. He’s very arthritic and has become ornery toward his brothers and sisters, but every time we come back from an outing without him, he has three words for us, “woo woo woo”. It’s as if he’s asking, “Where’ve you been?” When he wants our attention he’ll often snap his jaws together a few times like he’s snapping at flies or bees, but he’s looking right at us. I try never to pass him by without stopping to pat him or hug him and tell him what a good boy he is and how much I love him. He was and still is the best dog I’ve ever met. He was a calm, obedient puppy and hasn’t changed.

Fudge
AKA Floppy Boy

Bebe
AKA Floppy Girl

Fudge and Bebe, aka the “Floppies”, are part chow and part lab. We were going to be providing foster care for these dogs whose family was moving to the states. One of the older kids, however was employed here and would take them once he got proper housing, etc. Well, surprise (!) I fell in love with them, too and the kid didn’t complain when he didn’t get them back. They came out of the bush behind this family’s home about six months apart, apparently from different litters but the same parents. Many times they act like two halves of the same dog. You’ll see them lying down a few feet apart, but in the same position. They look like big teddy bears and they act like them most of the time, too. Fudge will always stop on the landing of the front steps to try to get me to hug him on my way into the house. I do when my arms aren’t full. Before he blew out his knee last year, he would jump so his front paws would land on the railing (to make it easier for me to hug him). He knocked down a bunch of my plants over the years. Bebe is happiest at feeding time and does a cute little dance acting just like a puppy on the way to the kitchen. I always tell them they’re the “floppiest kids in the whole wide world”. I think they arrived in 1997 or ’98 at which time Fudge was 18 months old and Bebe about a year.

Yoda
AKA Puppu

Yoda doing the
“Dead Dog Ballet”

A short time later Yoda was found by friends. She was the most pathetic looking creature you could imagine. She needed major medical attention and our friends couldn’t afford to help her. When I took her to the vet the day after we took her home, he said she was about six months old. She weighed seven pounds. She was so malnourished that the cartilage had not formed for her ears to stick up, so they curled backward. She had no fur because of mange, but was scabby from scratching, and her x-rays showed that she had bad hips which would cause problems later on in life. The vet said she’d probably be a lap dog – 12 to 15 pounds. I took her home and nursed her back to health. Once, a short time later when I had taken the dogs to the beach, Bebe accidentally bumped into her and broke her leg. Poor Yoda.
Her bones were so weak. Her leg just hung there, broken in half. I carried her up the hill to the car and back to the vet. After her recovery and growth to adulthood, she is a 50 lb. pit bull.
She’s the best watch dog ever, and even Peter is a little intimidated by her. She’s actually a great big scaredy cat but always tries to act all mean. We usually put her in our bedroom whenever we have visitors. She sleeps on an ottoman in the corner of the room and gets into the funniest positions. She looks like a road kill with her legs up in the air. Michael has taken scores of pictures of her because he wanted to start a “dead dog blog”. She’s too funny.

Running out of time…..more to come….

Tags: St. Croix

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 pm and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.