The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
More about pets
We brought Heidi with us when we moved to Union from Warrenton. Great Danes aren’t known around Union, and some of our children’s friends here wanted to see “the Great Dane,” who was in the bedroom on our bed with the door closed so she wouldn’t be running around. The little friends ended up all standing around the bed with Heidi in the middle of it, calmly enjoying the attention, as interested in her audience as the boys were in her, and it was very comical, as if she were some kind of exotic “rare specimen” being studied. And they were impressed!
One day Dave put her in the barn, where she died a natural death.
Later, another Great Dane, Foxy, came to live with us the first of several Great Danes we adopted. Foxy was a female Brindle, who was “the-dog-that-walked-by-itself,” a loner, and she had a litter of nine puppies in 1987. So, apparently she welcomed some company! The sire was Tigger, a male Brindle who we had adopted through a Washington Post ad when he was about four. They were a matched pair. Dave was “nanny” for the puppies. We kept just one, named the Whirlybird because that’s what she was. She turned out to be quite unmanageable, and our veterinarian was willing to find her a good home as long as the details remained confidential, so we never knew who adopted her. When Tigger was five years old, he and I were napping on my bed one afternoon; he suddenly jumped off the bed, and died.
And the last adoptee was one of our favorites, Jericho, another fawn. He didn’t have the most attractive physique, but he had a most endearing personality. We think he was the best and smartest and bravest one of all our Great Danes. Dave recalls and our youngest son Erik and Jericho traveling all over this place together. The kids took him to the vet one time, and although he was hurting and walking funny, he sat in the waiting room with his rump on a chair and some of his legs touching the floor, looking proud, and well behaved; he was the star of the waiting room. It was terrible when we had to have Jericho put down by our veterinarian, in our bedroom, because his kidneys were failing and he couldn’t get up.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee (1931 – 2024) built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
The loving bond between people and a dog. Nothing like it.
Absolutely!
Oh, animals always wind up being heart-breakers! I grew up with a German Shepherd named King in a tiny little hamlet in upstate New York. When I was just three, our cousin was building a house just two houses down the road from us. My mother wound up letting me go visit our cousin by myself because King would not let me walk in the road – and he wouldn’t let the cousin or anybody else get close to me. Talk about protection! He died when we were both twelve, hit by a car. Thankfully, I slept through the whole thing.
My whole life I’ve had cats and dogs in the house. At one point, we had a total of five for several chaotic years. Then they started dying – three in one year! When we were down to one, I said let’s see what it’s like not to have animals, because I’m tired of watching them die. I lasted three months, then we found a kitten by the old house that we were in the process of moving out of. As I was picking him up, I turned and there was another one … and then another one. I didn’t really want three cats, but who would decide which to keep and which to give away? So I still have those three … plus two more that my granddaughter left when she moved out.
I’m destined to be run by critters!
I wish Dave was still here to respond. 🙁
I’m like you, Gee. I have lived almost my entire life with animal companions (dogs only) – save my five years at university – and a couple of other brief periods after my friends pass over the rainbow bridge. In my world, a house just isn’t a home without a dog! They are God’s gift to man. When the Honeybee and I first got together, we did integrate her cat into the household with my Great Dane. What is funny is my Dane absolutely HATED cats; he chased the neighborhood family and feral cats them from our yard when they ventured into it. But he fully accepted my wife’s cat into the family; they truly loved each other.
I wish Dave was here to comment too. 🙁
Brief aside: Last month I was going through my old emails and to my great surprise discovered an unread “Grandfather Says” article (with a contemporary photo of Dave and his Tatjana) that Dave sent to me as a final entry (not an Elaine Chronicle) to the series. Apparently I overlooked it because he had sent it on Christmas Day 2023; a time when I am not on my computer very much. It was pushed so far down in the queue that by the time I came back to check my computer a couple of days later I had completely missed it. I will publish his final entry this coming Christmas.