The Dogs That Came Before

So, here’s the thing. Dogs will steal your heart. But eventually, they all will break it. Nobody likes to think about it, but when you first say hello, you are also inevitably going to have to say goodbye. If you’re lucky, you’ll have years. Maybe even a decade, or a decade and a half. But it will happen. Sometimes sooner than you expect.

Whooo… just a minute. I know you’re probably thinking, “hey Debbie Downer, I thought this blog was about shenanigans, chaos, fun stuff…right?…” And it is! Or it will be. But to explain how we got here, we have to start with the Dogs That Came Before. I’m not going to bore you with all the details of every dog that I’ve ever owned loved (and there were a lot), but it’s extremely important to ‘the plot,’ so to speak, to talk about Bananas and Brownie. And Asti. Especially Asti.

Asti was the first dog that was 100%, truly mine. I grew up with dogs. We never went long without one. Until I moved out on my own and had to leave my enormous, beautiful mutt Max, behind. Man, did I miss him. I had moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment with my significant other, but not too far away. Until we got married and moved to Kentucky. Six hours away. Not so easy to drop by to see him then.

We had been in Kentucky for almost a year and had an opportunity to move into a house in the country. A friend of ours had a border collie, and I was absolutely captivated. She was gorgeous, and brilliant, and so, so sweet. So, I started looking for border collie puppies. I soon found someone with a litter in the same small town we had just moved outside of. When I called, they only had a few that hadn’t been spoken for, so we made arrangements to go meet them.

Someone had told me that the best way to choose a puppy was to sit down and call all of the pups, and the first one to you was the one that was meant for you, so that’s what I did. That’s how I met Asti. She was so beautiful. She had ‘unusual’ markings for a border collie because most of her face was white. She had a black spot on the top of her head and black ears. The rest of her was the typical black and white, with just a bit of tan on her back legs.  She had the most beautiful eyes. Since her face was white, she looked like she was wearing black eyeliner, and her eyelashes were white. Just gorgeous.

Asti taught me so much about border collies. For starters, ball is love, ball is life. And there is no off switch when there is a frisbee around. And an unemployed border collie won’t stay that way. But also, she was so easy to train. She picked up new commands like she had always known them. And she loved to ‘help’ cook. She would stay at our feet in the kitchen and eat bits of bell pepper and carrot as we chopped them. She loved to eat bananas. So much so that on more than one occasion, I came into the kitchen to find her trying to steal the bunch off the island.

She had a few quirks, like ‘digging’ the water out of her bowl as soon as we refilled it and taking mouthfuls of food and hiding them for later behind the pillows of the couch and down inside it.

She was the center of my world. But life sometimes makes plans for us, and soon I was expecting. Asti was amazing with my daughter, Katie. One night when I was making dinner, I heard Katie giggling and went to see what was so funny. Asti had taught her how to fetch. She was lying on our futon (I know, how Gen X, right?), and she kept dropping a ball, and Katie would run over and get it and bring it back, only for Asti to drop it for her again. If my Katie couldn’t reach the ball, Asti would get it for her.

I regret that as time went on, and we added Gus, and then we moved back home, and I went back to school, and then the kids got involved with things… etc., etc., I had less and less time for her. But she still loved me just the same. I was her person. I miss her every day. She gave me (us) 16 and a half years. I wish I could have had 100 more. I, to this day, with 8 border collies, wish I could have her back here with me. I feel like I owe her so much more than she got from me. She is the one dog that I truly feel like I failed. She deserved the world.

Once we had moved home, we were living out “in the country” just a couple of miles from where I grew up. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the world who shouldn’t own dogs. Often these people decide to get rid of their dogs when the new wears off, or they become challenging, or sometimes if they get bigger than expected. We had so many dogs dumped on us over the years. We would try to find them homes when we could. One of them was so sweet that we kept her. Her name was Brownie. She was a German Shorthair Pointer mix. She had an energy to rival Asti, and they got along great. Our biggest concern with her was that she would become so focused on chasing something that she wouldn’t pay attention to where she was and would sometimes run straight out into the road in front of the house, which was extremely busy. Otherwise, though, she was a great dog. She loved running around the yard, just being near the kids. Did I mention she was full of an insane amount of energy? So, at this point, we have 2 kids, 2 cats, 2 dogs, and 3 acres.

And then came Bananas….