Before we had Keeway, we had a spare parts mutt named Stetson. We got her just before we got married, some 20 odd years ago. Kenny and I had been talking about getting a Labrador as we had both raised Labs before. One Saturday morning, one of the programmers that worked for Kenny called to say he had found a little tiny puppy under his motorcycle, during a terrible thunder and lightning storm. The pup had climbed under the bike to get out of the rain and get a little warmth from the engine of the big bike.
He called Kenny to say that she was so little that he had put her in his inside jacket pocket for the ride home. His Dad wouldn't let him keep the pup, but he had heard Kenny say he was thinking about getting a dog and would he be interested in seeing her. Kenny was on his way into the office anyway, so he said "sure, bring the pup, I'd like to see her."
Well, she was tiny, no more than 5 or 6 weeks old, malnourished, losing her fur, little ribs sticking out - a complete mess, and the only resemblance she had to a Labrador was that she was black. When I first saw her, I thought "that's not even close to a Labrador!" But she instantly stole my heart. As we debated what to name her, (the moment Kenny walked through the door with her, she was already our puppy) we just could not think of a name for this little raggamuffin. We had just returned from a trip to Texas and while we were there, I bought a Gen-U-Ine Stetson cowboy hat! As we debated names, the pup climbed in to the hat and fell in to a sound puppy sleep. Kenny said, "if we don't think of a good name for her in 15 minutes, we'll call her Stetson." And that's how she got her name. While the pup was sleeping in the Stetson cowboy hat, our cat, appropriately named "Cowboy" came up to see what all the fuss was about. She approached the upside-down stetson hat casually, took a sniff to see what was in the hat, and instantly (and I'm not kidding here) went straight up the wall, across the top of the ceiling and down into the next room in less then 1.5 seconds. A minute later, she poked her head out of the next room where she had made her high velocity re-entry, with a look that just screamed - "Have you any idea that there is a DOG in your hat?, have you people lost your minds?"
For the next few weeks, the cat tortured the little puppy mercilessly. She whacked her around, chased her out of the room at her pleasure - but then, much to her surprise, she went into the typical puppy growth spurt. Suddenly, the little pup towered over the cat and she became a bit more polite. And then a lot more polite.
We nourished her back to health, cleaned her up and she lived to a very ripe old age of nearly 18 years. As it turned out, she did have some Labrador in her, as well as Flat Coated English Retriever and Border Collie. She was actually a beautiful dog. People would ask us "What kind of dog is she?" After we got tired of saying that she was just a mutt, we began answering "She's a Tufted English Basselope" and we just kept walking and we always heard people behind us say, "What kind of dog did they say she was", or even funnier, "I don't think I've ever seen a Tufted English Basselope" I think Stetson got the joke, even if the humans didn't.
She had a few neurotic quirks. Among them, humans could not, and should not, be allowed to swim, if a human was found in the water, they needed immediate rescue. Her definition of rescue, however, involved pounding the unwitting human on the head with her paws. Second, squirrels were the root of all evil on the planet. Squirrels were the spawn of Satan. All evil in the world flowed from squirrels, of this, she was certain. Crows, chipmunks, other dogs, all other living creatures she treated with joy and affection. Once, on vacation, she watched a chipmunk sit in her food bowl and eat her entire bowl of dry food. He had to come back with other chipmunk helpers to eat all the food. Stetson just watched and smiled. If there was a thunderstorm, it was imperative that everyone, and that meant everyone, had to get into the bathtub for safety sake. If we exchanged harsh words as a newly married couple, that had to be stopped immediately! This was accomplished by jumping in between us and ferociously licking first one face then the other in rapid succession. Very rapid, so rapid that it made us start laughing so hard we always forgot what we started fighting about. To this day, we both KNOW that without Stetson, our marriage might not have lasted. Like most young couples we fought about stupid things. We are forever grateful to her. In fact, when we think about it, Stetson is probably one of the main reasons we are still together after all these years.
Letting her go was one of the hardest things we ever did as a couple. But she made it very clear to us that it was time for her to go. She woke me up in the middle of the night to let me know she wanted to go her favorite park down the street one last time. It was then that I knew, with complete certainty, she was telling me she needed to go.
If you have never seen the poem called "Rainbow Bridge", please click the link in this post. Kenny and I will see Stetson there and you will see your beloved dogs there too. http://www.petloss.com/poems/maingrp/rainbowb.htm
If you have ever lost a beloved pet, I hope this gives you some comfort. I know it does for me.
