These Are the Dogs of Our Lives
Over the last 38 years or so, we have shared our home and life with six dogs. From Eddie the timid golden retriever in Ohio in 1988 to Stella the black Lab mix, who joined the household from underneath a Fieldbrook trailer in 2013, these are the dogs of our lives.
They have all been rescue dogs in the sense that we rescued them, and they rescued us.
We think Eddie had been neglected or abused before we got him as a beefy 12-week-old puppy in the hills of southeast Ohio. His major talents were prodigious drooling and a three-foot vertical “circus dog” jump at mealtime. He was scared of everything, poor guy; his safe place during thunderstorms was the downstairs tub. So by the time he was 2, we decided to get him a therapy dog.
That was Lucy, a black Lab whom we rescued from a basement puppy mill. She was therapy, all right, for all of us. A natural athlete, she was Brenda’s running buddy for years, and never met a tennis ball she wouldn’t chase until she dropped.
Shaughnessy joined the household in 1995 when Brenda’s brother, Woody, died. By then, we were living in Utah, and flew the overweight (pizza diet), 9-year-old yellow Lab from Fort Lauderdale to Salt Lake City. At her first encounter with snow, Shaughnessy contorted herself, trying not to put any of her feet down. Eddie and Lucy showed her the ropes of being a country dog until cancer took all three of them in quick succession in 2002-03.
It was mid-winter in northern Utah when Lucy left us, a tennis ball by her side, and we decided to wait until summer to get our next dog. But is there anything emptier than a dogless home? She had been gone for just two weeks when the vet called. “I know it’s too soon,” she said, “but you have to see this puppy. I swear she’s channeling Lucy.”
Police had arrested the 10-week-old black Lab mutt stray on a stormy Christmas Eve night. It was too cold, too snowy, too soon to take on a puppy . . . but we drove over for “a look.” Somehow, the puppy came home for a “sleep over” and we never did get around to taking Lulu the “loaner dog” back.
When she was 5, Lulu started acting a little depressed, so we agreed to take a pound puppy who had inexplicably been returned by her first family. Sadie, a chocolate Lab/Chesapeake mix, careened into our lives in 2008, perking up Lulu from her funk and knocking pretty much everything over for the next 13 years. She was a dog of irrepressible exuberance, big feet, boundless enthusiasm and a helicopter tail. She loved sprinklers, kelp, beaches and gluttony.
In 2013, Lulu transitioned to the great dog beach in the sky. Sadie was lonely, so that spring, we found Stella as a therapy dog for Sadie, annoying her out of her midlife funk.
Sadie died in 2020, and Stella, now 13½, has been an only dog ever since. Life is a little slower for all of us these days, which suits us just fine. A dog house is a happy house.
Ted Pease and Brenda Cooper live with Stella in Trinidad.
