When in doubt....

When you're having a rotten day...

When someone you love has disappointed you...

When your so-called puppy goes into season...

When wondering what to post and you're not in a real witty mood...

Solution: Drudge up the past to make light of the present.

Our puppy, Ellie, just went into season yesterday which would explain why Duke has been acting nuts when around her. We now have to have the big dogs outside first, let them eat, then kennel Duke up for Ellie to go outside and then come in to eat. Rats... This is getting old... and apparently we've got 3 more weeks of this...

So I told the girls this morning about my dogs growing up. 95% of our farm dogs were named Sparky. The cats were all named Shasta. They had heard most of the stories, but this particular one they hadn't yet.

The one dog that I told them about was of course Sparky. A neighbor dog was in heat and my dear lovable dog, Sparky, jumped through a plate glass window to get to her. We had to pay for the window... and we didn't even get one of the puppies...

Then another dog, Sparky, loved to chase cars or anything in the gravel road. One day, a neighbor boy came up to the house. He had been driving past on his dad's tractor that had blades on it. He had been discing a field up the road. Sparky had run out under the tractor and had his back sliced open and was dying in great pain. My mom told this boy to go get his gun and put our dog out of it's misery. I remember a few of my sisters and I sat on my bed sobbing, covering our ears and jumping when the gun went off.

Benji was a tiny pure white Terry-Poo puppy that we got just before the 4th of July, 1976, the Bi-Centennial. On the 4th, my mom was doing laundry and lots of white sheets piled up in the laundry room. Mom accidentally stepped on little Benji who was sleeping on the sheets. His back was broken and he died. We had a funeral service for him and buried him under a tree in the back yard.

Then we got one of Benji's sisters, and being on the Benji kick, named her Tiffany. She was beautiful! I was 10 years old at the time. She could do a little hula dance with her little butt with an almost non-existent tail. She was the only farm dog that my dad let into the house. Even tho he grumbled about all our pets, this one became his pal and we'd often find him on his chair during his "10 minute naps" with Tiffany sleeping in his lap.

We almost lost her a few times. Her favorite thing to do was to play "car roulette". The road in front of our house was on a hill. She would run out into the road and lay down when a car drove over the hill. They wouldn't see her and would straddle her as they drove. Then she would roll out between the wheels as it passed. We had seen her do this a few times and had heart attacks each time.

She was "married" to the poodle on the other side of the hill and had so many litters of adorable pups. Everyone wanted one. We gave them away.

I was 24, married and moved away when I got a call at work one day from my mom. Tiffany had died. She would drink water out of our horse trough (my sister is a horse woman) but that night had slipped into the trough. She was pregnant, of course... and couldn't get out and drowned. They found her the next morning. I cried so hard that day at work. The receptionist thought a family member had died and tried to send me home.

Oh boy... this didn't cheer me up very much...