25 Random Things About My Dog
22 March 2009Tomorrow we have to put down our dog Alex. We fought with everything we had over the past 2 weeks to save his life from what the DR’s believe is lymphoma (cancer) in his brain that came on suddenly and with a vengence.
Just a month ago, I posted this “Note” on Facebook. When the trend was going around to post 25 random facts about yourself, I much preferred to post 25 random facts about him because he is that special. At the time I wrote it I recall thinking I wanted to preserve many of the special memories I had of him. I had no idea that the wheels were about to fall off the wagon.
We’re beyond heartbroken at the thought of losing him tomorrow, but we have to do what’s best for him.
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1. He’s a 5-year old Border Collie named Alex
2. He’s almost 65 pounds, which is about 20 pounds bigger then the average Border Collie. He’s not overweight – just tall and long.
3. We Alex to keep our other dog, Harvey, company. Unfortunately Harvey passed away unexpectedly about a year and a half later.
4. We feel bad that Alex is alone all day, so we take him to Metro Dog once a week so he can be part of a pack. He loves loves loves it there. Play with the pack for a few hours, sleep for a few hours, play with the pack for a few hours… and so on all day.
5. He won’t play with other dogs until he knows them really well. What he usually does is find a group of dogs and herd them. Especially at the dog park – he will find a group and run constant circles around them. Most people find it pretty amusing. He feels like he’s doing his job.
6. Speaking of jobs, he’s happiest when he has a job. Since we don’t have any sheep at our house, we’ve taken to naming all his toys, hiding them around the house, and then telling him which one to go get. He knows all the names of his 20+ toys, and his retrieval success rate is usually around 85%.
7. He has recently decided that he needs a job when I’m in the shower. He’ll come up and tap on the glass and then stare at me expectantly. So I tell him which toy to get an off he goes.
8. He knows “upstairs” and “downstairs”. When we’re downstairs and tell him “birdy” is “upstairs” he’ll run up looking for it. If he’s having a hard time finding it we hear him running around and jumping on/off the bed in his pursuit. He’s persistent.
9. He was raised with cats (who were raised with Harvey). So they all have a healthy respect for each other. One of our cats loves him more then he loves us. He is Alex’s little shadow. Follows him around everywhere…jumping on the bed when Alex jumps on the bed, jumps off when he jumps off and does everything he possibly can to lay next to him and mark him by rubbing on him. Alex is a good sport about it for the most part, but sometimes he gets a little frustrated and bares his teeth at him or snaps at him. Doesn’t faze the cat a bit.
10. He’s not allowed to herd the cats, but he is allowed to police their scratching in forbidden places. If the cats are scratching someplace they are not supposed to he will run up and insert himself between the cat and said object. Sometimes he’ll bare his teeth a little (he doesn’t understand that cats don’t know what teeth baring means). But he’s effective.
11. If he thinks the cats are fighting (not playing) he’ll insert himself between them. He doesn’t always know the difference, but we tell him that they’re okay, and he settles back down.
12. He likes to spoon – and I like having a big warm fluffy dog to snuggle with.
13. He likes to lay on my pillow between the headboard and my head and lay his face on my shoulder. The cat sleeps there at night, and Drew told Alex to lay there one night as a joke. He liked it so much that he lays there all the time now. We don’t let him sleep on the bed, but he can come visit.
14. Alex knows his place in the pack. Unlike Harvey, there is no question that we are higher in the pack order then he is – and he is super sweet and eager to please.
15. We have a dog door built into the service door between the garage and the backyard, and he has a bed in the garage. He can go back and forth while we’re at work. When the garage door opens he goes straight to his bed and stays there until we pull the cars in or out and close the garage door. It’s a relief because Harvey would always take off down the court at every opportunity. Alex mostly stays in the yard.
16. He’s good with kids. We’ve been saying for years that the dog needs a “boy” to play with. We’re happy that he’s going to get his wish before he’s too old to enjoy it.
17. He gets anxious when we get anxious. If we’re reacting to a movie or video game he will either attempt to bury himself on the upset person or go snuggle with the other of us. It doesn’t take much – we never yell in the house. Just raising our voice in frustration upset him.
18. Based on advice, we tried playing a recording of a baby crying loudly to get him used to the sounds. It didn’t bother him a bit. I think he might get a bit freaky when he hears actual babies crying and upset in the house – babies that are part of his pack.
19. He loves car rides (no surprise) but we had to work with him for about 2 years to get him to this point. We got him from a breeder in Fort Bragg – and he threw up 3 times in the first 20 minutes on the way home (very windy road). From then on he’d turn green and start to drool in the car, sometimes eventually throwing up. We spent a lot of time taking him on short trips with great rewards (dog park, Petco). Sometimes we’d put him in the car and just drive around our neighborhood for a few minutes, or sometimes we made him lay in the car in the garage for a few minutes. Now he’s fine. Our longest trip with him was to Vegas and back.
20. When we first brought him home, Harvey was 9. Alex was a little puppy coming into his house, but it soon become apparent that Alex was going to be higher in the pack order. Harvey was very submissive to other dogs. Dogs figure these things out naturally, and Alex just assumes more of a leader role most of the time.
21. We stopped taking him to the dog park regularly because it seemed like there was always an aggressive dog there. Alex doesn’t start anything, but he doesn’t back down easily either when another dog is pushing the boundaries.
22. His favorite thing to do is play Frisbee. He’s really good at it. We play with him in the back yard 3 times a day on average. He’d play all day if we would only oblige.
23. He’s gone through a lot of toys over the years. For the most part he’s not destructive with his toys but eventually he’ll chew holes in them. He does, however, still have the very first toy we named for him. It’s dirty – but no holes.
24. He’ll learn the name of a new toy within minutes. Like children he loves when we bring a new toy home, and we start working with him right away so he knows which toy it is … foxy, birdy, rabbit, bear, etc. We’ll throw it and say “Go get horsey!”
25. He’s our last dog for a while. Including Harvey, Drew has had dogs for the past 15 years and while they bring a lot of love into the house they are also a lot of work. We feel bad that Alex doesn’t have another dog in his pack, but we lucked out with him. He is a really good boy and I worry that the next dog might turn out to be hell on wheels. You just never know – like people they all have their own personalities – and only so much of that is nature vs nurture.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I am sorry you have to put him down. Very sad.
on March 22nd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Thank you, Poppy. It’s been a very difficult day. He was everything to us. He was our baby.