Last night after dinner was finished, dishes done, garden watered, and A Bird was finally put to bed, L Bird and I were able to sit and watch a little TV. As I sat down on the couch, Roxy came and took up residence in her normal spot, pressed up against my feet in front of me. I get caught up in everything else most of the time that I take for granted what an awesome dog she is and whatever reason that hit me as sad last night. So I reached down and scratched her ears and showed her some love and decided that I would tell a little bit of her story.
I got Roxy as a puppy in late January of 1999. The girl that I was dating (actually engaged to) had left me a couple of months prior and moved out of the apartment I was living in. I had given her a puppy, TJ, for Valentine’s Day the year before and I still had him when she moved out with the exception that she would take him when she found a place of her own. So technically I was just dog sitting for MY dog. But anyway, knowing that I would be losing TJ too, I decided I was going to get myself a puppy. This puppy would be the first dog that was solely mine, it wasn’t a family dog, it wasn’t a girlfriend’s dog, it was going to be MY dog and MY dog alone. I started scouting the classifieds to see what was out there, I had no money so it would have to be in the “Absolutely free” category of the paper. After a few days of looking through the paper, an ad jumped off the page and hit me. “Free to good homes. ½ American Bulldog/ ½ Pitbull puppies. Ready to go now” I grabbed the phone and immediately called. The woman on the phone assured me that she had twelve healthy, happy puppies. I quickly wrote down her address and phone number and told her I would be there in an hour.
I drive way out into the sticks to a place called Whiskey Hill Road and as I’m driving down this road, I notice that there aren’t a lot of houses out there and I began doubting my directions. Then there on the horizon I saw a rundown farmhouse with a rather large dog tied to the barn. As I got closer I noticed that there were quite a few puppies running around her as well, so I figured that it must be the place and pulled in. As I got out of my truck I was met at the porch by the woman I spoke to on the phone. She walked me out to the barn and told me to stay away from the mother as she really disliked strangers. Man, did that prove to be true. As I got closer to the barn I got close look at the mother, she was tall and solid muscle. She had white fur, black patches and black around her one eye. She was stretched as far as her chain would go and snarling at me so much that she was almost foaming at the mouth. She was definitely intimidating. The woman walked over and grabbed her by the collar and held onto her as I nervously surveyed the pups. There were twelve puppies and eleven of them were white and black like the mother, but the last puppy was a bright reddish/liver color. She seemed to be the runt of the litter but she also seemed to be the boldest too. She marched right up to me and barked while the others stayed close to their snarling mother. It was that in that moment, I was sold on that little red pup. I picked her and told the lady that I would gladly take that pup and she was happy to be rid of one of the litter. I carried that pup back to the truck, climbed in and she almost immediately fell asleep in my lap. On that ride home, I thought long and hard and finally decided that her name would be Roxy and our adventures were just beginning.
Over the next few months, she proved to be a challenging and extremely rewarding puppy. It was the beginning of March and we had a stretch of unseasonably warm weather so I took Roxy and TJ (I still had him at this point) for a walk down behind my apartment to the canal that ran into the boat launch. Neither of them were on leashes, and they ran along in front of me never straying too far, as we got closer to the bank of the canal, TJ, being the water dog he was, bolted for the water and jumped in. He was a competent swimmer and I had no worries but before I could think, Roxy followed him right over the edge and plunged three feet from the bank and disappeared under the muddy water. I made it to bank, just as she popped back up above the surface, I quickly snatched her out and the three of us made our way home, cold, wet, and muddy.
Then came the adventures in crate training. I was still finishing up my last semester of college, so I needed my sleep desperately. I would put her in her crate at night and cover it with a blanket to block out the light and then try to go to sleep. Yeah right, that never happened, she would bark, whine and scratch at the kennel until I was so exhausted and spent, that I would just pull her out of the kennel and let her sleep on the bed with me. A bad habit that still happens every night to this day.
Me in 2000 with my 85 lb lapdog and man, look at that hideous couch I had!!!
May came and I was in the homestretch for finals and getting my degree, when I had the unfortunate circumstance of being evicted thrown on me. After my ex-girlfriend left, my cousin moved in and he worked for our landlord. So every month I handed him my half of the rent and he took it to work and gave it with his half of the rent to our landlord, his boss, or so I thought. It turns out, he just pocketed my rent money and my landlord, after not receiving rent for four months called me up and told me I owed four months of back rent. I told him my side and that that was not the true, I gave my rent to my cousin every month and he said he gave it to him. Well after a bit of discussion he said that it was not his problem and gave me two weeks to get all of my stuff out of the apartment. I learned a very important lesson, never trust your family with money. But anyway, it was the middle of May, I had three finals coming up, two weeks to pack, find a new place to live, work for 30 hours a week to pay my bills, and oh and graduate from college in there too. I didn’t have enough money on that short notice to come up with a security deposit and first months’ rent anywhere. I reached out to my Mom and Stepfather who were in the process of building a new house, but my Stepfather didn’t want a puppy there ruining the new house, so I could move home if I got rid of my dog. Screw that, that got my spiteful side all fired up and I would be damned before I would go home without that dog. Roxy was MY dog and no one was going to tell me what to do with it. Then through pure luck, and probably a good helping of guilt because it was her son who had screwed me over, my Aunt took me in. Well, sort of took me in. She lived in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of land and she had an old camper that sat on the back forty of her property and that is what she offered to me. It was old, had no electricity, no running water and was a half mile hike to get to it. But it was free and mine if I wanted it. I jumped at the opportunity, most of my possessions went into storage or got sold, I got everything out of the apartment, passed my finals, graduated from college, and still managed to keep my job and my Roxy.
I lived in that camper for 6 months, from May through the end of October. It was cold and inconvenient, but I made the best of it. I would let Roxy out in the morning and rough house with her, then hook her up to a lead and leave her while I walked half a mile to my Aunt’s or drive to my Grandmother’s or the YMCA to shower before work. Then I would put in eight to ten hours of work and leave for home. It would normally be dark and I would be tired as I drug myself up the hill to my camper, but it was always worth it to see Roxy’s wagging tail when I got up the hill. Sometimes it would be just before dusk so I would start a little camp fire, sit and watch the fire while I gave Roxy her dinner. Then she would snuggle up beside me and settle in until I was ready to call it a night. Then I would open the camper door and head in to bed with Roxy jumping right up next to and trying to force her fat head under the covers with me. Occasionally in the night a local pack of coyotes would circle the camper, sniff and scratch the camper door because they could smell Roxy, but I would quickly disperse them with a shout. Those were crazy times.
Somewhere towards the end of my stay in the camper, I convinced L Bird to date me. I don’t know how I did it without her seeing me as a hobo or serial killer that lived out in the woods is still a mystery to me. But I remember the first time L Bird came out and actually stayed with me, she had made me a plate of chocolate chip cookies and brought them out to me. She took the cookies into the camper and I let Roxy loose to run around a bit and work off some excess energy. L Bird sat down with a big cookie on the camper steps and Roxy came flying by at full speed and stole the cookie from L Bird’s hand at a full sprint. That was the beginning of their relationship. Roxy proceeded to chew up and destroy L Bird’s stuff for the next year as she worked out her jealousy and learned to accept L Bird. Eventually Roxy quit chewing everything up and now L Bird is connected to Roxy almost more than I am.
Our First Apartment on Lewis St. After The Camper
I eventually got an apartment that let me have a dog and L Bird moved in with me. Things got much better. We got Frisco later that year and Roxy had a constant companion, life was good. Things just went along until Roxy’s next big challenge, A Bird.
L Bird was pregnant and I was extremely nervous and anxious as to how Roxy and Frisco would take to children. Neither one of them had ever been around children much less babies, so I did what every dog owner does in that situation, I panicked. Then I quickly regained my composure and bought one of those “Baby Sounds” CD’s, you know someone basically just records their baby doing everything, laughing, cooing, screaming, splashing in the tub and then charges you $15 for it. But I was nervous so I put up the dough and got the CD. I took it home and played it for the dogs in 15 minute intervals, I know those poor dogs. They would just sit down and stare at the CD player and cock their heads from side to side. Eventually they just sort of tuned it out and went and flopped down on their dog beds. Then A Bird arrived and we came home. I had L Bird hold A Bird in her arms and I held each dog by the collar and they anxiously sniffed A Bird all over and eventually wandered off. I was so nervous about Roxy because of her breed and lack of exposure to children I was sick with worry that I would have to give her up if it didn’t work out. Then she turned out to be A Bird’s best friend, Frisco too. They quickly learned that A Bird was a good source for dropped food and their bond was forged. A Bird turned out to be a rough houser, Frisco didn’t care for that so he would just go as far away from her as possible when she didn’t have food, but Roxy was a different story.
A Bird would be laying on her back or getting some tummy time on a blanket on the floor and Roxy would try to cram herself as close to A Bird as possible. Sometimes I would have to pull Roxy away because she would be putting her weight on A Bird. Then as A Bird started crawling she would use Roxy as a foot stool or stepping block to catapult herself up and onto the couch and Roxy wouldn’t even flinch. So the dog I had been worrying about turned out to be my little girls greatest friend and tool lol.
Anyway, those are just a few of the tales of Roxy. There are soooooooo many more, but they could fill the pages of a book. Yep, Roxy is the best dog I have ever owned and she is the bar that all of our future dogs will be measured against. So while she is still kicking I am taking the time to cherish her and treat her as well as she has treated me. She’s a good ol’ dog and has given 13 great years and hopefully more to come.
