Our First Dogs - Page 1

Let's take a moment to remember the first few dogs in our lives, the one's we had as kids that are probably responsible for turning us into the dog lovers we are today. 

Maybe it was the stray that showed up at your house one day, maybe the neighbor's dog had puppies and your parents got you your favorite one, maybe your parents were avid dog people and always had some breed of dog in the house, the stories are endless.

Remember any funny antics or characteristics of your first dog(s)? Any cool stories about them? These first few dogs were the foundations to us becoming avid dog people, and they were probably our partners in crime when we were young .

My first dog, an American Eskimo named Frosty, was my partner is crime. She was no show dog, but that didn't matter to me. My parents purchased her from a mall pet shop (they had no clue at the time) for the kids (my 4 brothers). They had an Old English Sheepdog whom had died a few months before, so they decided it was time for another dog. 
Frosty was about 8 or 9 months old when I was born, and so we were literally raised together . She was protective of me and always put up with me (little kids like to pull fur, ears & tails, hehe). We were best friends.
Coming home from school, she'd always be waiting by the sliding-glass door in the back, and would be so happy that her buddy had returned.
Whenever she had to go the vet or groomer, I would always come, making sure my parents set the appointment for when I'd be home, haha. If she needed any meds, I'd be in charge of giving them to her, whether it was pills for Lyme Disease or ointments for hot spots.
We were inseparable.
One of her antics was, we'd toss a couch pillow on the floor, and she'd start rolling all over it until she was satisfied.
One of the saddest times was when she was getting really old. She was still fairly active and healthy up until she was 15, but by then she really started showing her age. My dad hated the idea of putting her to sleep - she was his (& my) baby after all. But, the night before her final appointment, she had passed on.. She was 16 years old..
I am grateful for all the good times we shared, and for her being the one responsible for turning me into a dog lover. She will always have a special place in my heart..

~Lauren

My first dog I alwasy thought was a Collie or Shelti mix, too big to be a shelty to small to be a collie. Found out years later she was a English Shepherd. Best dog I'll probably ever have. She jumped in the back of my moms pickup when she was filling up at a gas station and refused to get out, so mom brought her home. She had a few feet of rope she had chewed off around her neck. We bathed her, brushed her out and she spent the rest of teh day laying in the sun by the sliding glass door preening herself perfect. Mom named her Lady, because she conducted herself as such.

I was around 4 when Lady arrived. She was PTS when I was 16. We had many years and times of almost sharing the same brain. I swore that dog could read my mind. Training was almost not needed. Show her what you wanted once and she would know and do it the next time, like magic. We had other dogs that came and went but Lady was my heart dog, I think of her almost daily still, 18 yrs later. When I die, I want to see her first.

My first working dog was a German shepherd I named
Baron ( 1963). He was amazing, he was lean, well muscled and
was bred for work. My Stepfather was German, and I
think his father was SV in the 1940's.  I loved that dog,
he was my dog . My asshole older brothers would
not touch me if he was with me. 

Tears are forming, have not thought of him in years.
Who knows maybe he was the best dog I ever had.

When I was in fourth grade, my dad brought home a boxer pup that my uncle had bred (my uncle used to breed for show) without asking my mom.  Two years later when they divorced, the dog went with him.  We cried harder about Odie leaving than my dad leaving.  My mom isn't really a pet person, and I can understand raising 3 kids on her own that adding a pet was more responsibility than she needed.

About 4  months after my husband and I married, I saw an ad in the paper for husky mix puppies.  I brought home the smallest, fuzziest white bundle of fur and named her Anna.  I adored that dog.  She was a husky/shepherd mix and looked just like a white shepherd.  She loved to chase a tennis ball, but couldn't catch it if her life depended on it.  She once went right up to a moose that was just outside the fence line and sniffed noses.  When our oldest was born, we took a series of pictures with the baby next to Anna to show how much she was growing. 

After our youngest was born in 2006, when Anna was 10, she suddenly had difficulty walking and refused to eat.  The pins in her knee from an ACL surgery years before had migrated into her bones, causing an infection and osteosarcoma; the vet said that surgically they could amputate the leg but that on x-ray it looked that there were other spots forming.  We treated the infection, and took her home.  She did well for about two weeks, but then one day couldn't get up and just looked at us with that expression that said it was time.  I cried harder than I'd ever cried before.  We got a lovely sympathy card from the vet's office.

Opal

My brother had allergies, so my childhood was dogless, except for the farm dogs I befriended at my aunts' and uncles' farms. 
 
When I left home, my life wasn't very settled, and I moved frequently, so it wasn't until 1983 that I got my first dog.

I was visiting my uncle's farm with a friend who had a GSD.

Lying underneath his table was just about the most pathetic bag of bones I'd ever seen. She looked to be a purebred GSD, but she was so thin, I wasn't sure.

My aunt and uncle explained that she had belonged to their next door neighbour, an elderly bachelor, who had recently had to go into an old age home. He obviously hadn't been looking after either himself or the dog very well. I think she was also pining for him because my aunt said they couldn't get her to eat much of anything. However, when I saw the dog food they'd been trying to fed her, it gave me a clue why. It was Purina Dog Chow, and it was full of insect larvae!

I was on the 11th floor of a high rise at the time, but since my GSD owning friend also was in an apartment, I decided to take the chance of adopting her. I am pretty sure she would have died if I hadn't.

Of course, I made a vet appointment for her, and the vet thought she wasn't going to live. She was 26 inches tall, and weighed only 35 lbs. He thought she had some sort of metabolic wasting disease.

It turned out he was wrong. As soon as she knew she was loved and cared for, she started to eat again, and before long, she was almost up to 70 lbs. She was always rather skinny, and a picky eater, but we had 5 good years together. I named her Lili Marlene, after the old WWII song.

She also had pannus, and was partially blind with it. Once I knew she was going to live, and had ajdusted to apartment life okay, I took her to an eye specialist. He kick started the treatment by giving her an injection of prednisone directly into the conjunctiva of the eye. I can only imagine how much that must have hurt, giving how sensitive the eye is.

It worked like magic. Within 48 hours, I could see that dirty brown film receding to the bottom of her eye.

A week later, we went back for a recheck. She walked into the clinic without hesitation, and followed me into the exam room. When the vet knelt down to pet her, she licked his face! He turned to me and said, "You know, this is one of the few breeds that understands we're trying to help them when we do nasty things like sticking needles into their eyes!"

Within a week, she was chasing a dark grey tennis ball in the near-darkness of a late summer evening.

She was a quiet, gentle soul, and had very little protective instinct. She was great with kids, and did well with obedience. I taught her to jump over a stick or my outstretched arm.  I asked a neighbour to walk her during the day while I was at work. She had a job babysitting her niece. The niece learned to walk hanging on to Lili's collar!

One day, I was out in the park with her, sitting under a tree as I marked test papers for my night school biology classes. Lili spotted a lady with a stroller at the other side of the park, and thought it was her friend, who walked her. She was off like a shot, trailing her leash behind her.

The poor lady saw this large GSD racing towards her and panicked. I jumped to my feet as fast as I could, and ran after my dog, shouting, "It's okay!! She won't hurt you!" Meanwhile, the lady was frantically turning the stroller this way and that, to keep her body between her child and my dog.

I grabbed Lili's leash, and, too embarrassed to say anything, marched her back to where I'd left my papers. I moved over to a picnic table, and finished my marking with Lili tied to the table!

My First Two Dogs:

My first two dogs that I recollect were Suzy, a Chow Mix; and Rowdy, a Black and Tan Mix.  We lived in the country and I was between 3 and 4 years old. 

I remember when I was outside playing and Suzy started barking and pushing me toward the house. Then she would dart out into the edge of the yard and bark and yelp. Then come back to me as I would wander her way.  She repeated this several times.  When the house keeper finally came out (she was deathly afraid of Suzy) she picked me up and we discovered Suzy had killed a rather large timber rattler.  Her face was bitten several times but her boy was safe.  By the way Back in those days the old folks used politicizes instead of the vet, must of worked she survived.

Rowdy was my everyday companion.  We made a good team.  Heck he could find box turtles withe the best of the.  We didn't do anything to them but to a little boy it was like tracking a bear.  He too, would keep me from snakes, isn't it amazing how God programs his creatures to protect us. I thought Rowdy was a boy until one night he didn't show up for his table scraps (we believed in an all natural diet LOL) Then I heard something under the house.  So what do boy do? Go see what it is.  I found Rowdy with some puppies that looked just like "HIM".  I raised em and gave em away.  Great squirrel dogs or so I was told.

Well, There's my first 2.  Guess I could have written a short book.

Tuff

My daughter & our first GSD, Gryndyll. She was supposed to be 3/4 GSD & 1/4 Belgian shepherd. The breeder let me have her for $50 dollars, which my husband thought was a fortune for an unpapered dog. She was so tolerant of my kids, & so watchful of them. She wouldn't let them near our woodstove, or let them climb the stairs. She was sweet & calm, & was just the best dog. Such a sweet girl. I miss her to this day! jackie harris

Oh the childhood dogs were the best!  I've told stories about my first dog before, but I never tire of them.  Freckles was a Dalmatian mix that my parents got at the pound.  He was, without a doubt, the smartest dog I've ever known.  He was literally my shadow, we went everywhere together.  He was white but his spots were gray and his ears, solid charcoal gray.  He weighed about 35 pounds and he was agile, strong and feared nothing.  I was a baby when we got him so we grew up together and boy, did we have fun.  He "helped" me eat the food I'd leave on my plate.  If my parents flicked a cigarette, he'd run and bite it until it was out, he hated smoke.  If there was a snake anywhere near, he was on it in seconds and he would shake them so hard, guts flew in all directions.  My grandmother, who lived on our street, was an operator for AT&T and sometimes had to work night shift.  She'd call the house after dark and say, "Send Freckles up.".  We'd open the door and say "Go to Grandma's!" and off he'd go.  Within a few minutes, he'd be on her porch.  When she'd leave for work, he'd walk her to the streetcar stop and wait until she was on, then she'd say "Okay, go home."  He'd come straight home and scratch to be let in.  He pulled our sleds up the hill and ran beside us on the way back down, barking all the way.  He'd roam to the adjacent neighborhood looking for love (in all the wrong places) and their fire department would call us to say they had him.  He'd sit with them until my brother or I walked the mile to pick him up.  They loved him, he was like their mascot.  He got into a fight once and came home with a gaping hole in his side.  My father poured peroxide in the wound and bandaged him up.  He died when I was 10 and I've never gotten over it, 43 years later.  We also had Beagles, a Weimaraner, two German Shorthair Pointers and an Irish Setter (not all at the same time).  They all lived out in the kennel but it was our job to keep them exercised and in shape for hunting.

After Freckles died, my friend and I heard about a litter of pups and went and each picked one.  As soon as I walked in the door, my mother told me to take him back.  My friend kept hers and named him "Gus", another neighborhood legend,  and another story.  So, about a month later, I was home alone and saw a tiny black puppy being dumped from a car right in front of our house.  Of course, I brought him in and when my parents came home, they told me to take him back, which I couldn't do!  So, he stayed and I named him Turkey Buzzard, called him "Turk".  He was a smallish lab mix with dark brown eyes and was my next best friend.  I trained him using bread!  I'd get the soft middle and roll it into a ball and use it as treats,  He's sit with a piece on his nose and stay perfectly still until I told him "get it", and he'd pop his nose up to toss the bread and then catch and eat it.  I taught him many tricks using bread balls.  He was an escape artist and once broke his chain.  Long story short, some kids found him, tied him to a tree and shot him twice with a bow and arrow.  He survived and we never found out who did it.  Then, he escaped by jumping through a screen, going after a rabbit in the yard.  He ended up getting his by a car and came home with a full cast from foot to shoulder.  He saw another rabbit and went right back through the screen, cast and all!  Uh, we put the glass in the bottom of the door after that one!  So, he lived until after I got married but stayed with my parents, he was old by that time.  When I had my daughter, he wouldn't let anyone near her except me.  He growled at my father when he tried to pick

This is a great topic.  Wonderful to read these stories.
I had a dog growing up, but I was really young and don't remember much about her.  She was a Shepherd/Beagle something mix.  Her name was Shayne.  I remember that she was in a kennel behind our garage.  Didn't get much attention.  My Brother and I used to catch daddy-long leg spiders, break the legs off it and feed it to her.  She loved them.  Anyway, my Brother and I (though I was way too young) didn't hold up the end of the bargan taking care of her so my Mom (single parent) had to find her a new home.  We found her a home with other children.  She was returned days later for biting the crap out of the young boy.  She about tore his knee off.  Not sure why, she loved us.  Anyway, my Mom found her another home and never heard from her again.
BUT, the dog that sticks fresh in my mind was a dog named "Spike".  He was a German Shepherd who was owned by our next door neighbor.  He was chained up with a dog house.  He was out during the day, was inside with his master during the night.  All the kids in the neighborhood were scared to death of Spike.  But for some reason (I know now) I was not.  I'd walk right in his yard, up to him and sit on his dog house with him for hours.  He was my childhood best friend.  I will never forget my Spike.  As I look back at then, but knowing who I am now, I understand what Spike meant to me and why he was there.

Brandi

jackie, your daughter is beautiful!!