We've all heard the expression that a "dog is a man's best friend". "Man" as in humanity. It's true. A dog provides a kind of friendship that a human friend couldn't. They never leave your side nor do they get angry with you. They're always playful, energetic, and they also age with you. My dogs are no different. I currently have two, but I've had a total of three in my life so far. I had to say goodbye to my first dog last summer. She got old with me, but she got sick and wasn't getting any better. So to start this story and to talk about all three dogs, we have to go back to the beginning. Fourteen years ago.
Zoey
When I was a kid, I had this small stuff toy dog and pretended that my toy dog was a real one. When it came to show-and-tell one time in school, I even said that I had a dog named "Sam". My parents realized that I wanted a "brown" dog and that it would be beneficial for me. So the day we went to pick our first dog up. It was after my soccer game on a cold November day back in 2002. I was only seven years old at the time and I remember that we were driving through the mountainous part of Pennsylvania, near Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the university my mom went to for her undergrad (IUP). When we got there, we were greeted by a middle-aged woman who bred dogs and as it turned out, they were Labrador Retrievers. We then went into a barn where the puppies were grouped and there was only one left. It was the most adorable sight you could ever see as a small child; with the pitter-patter of paws and that puppy face, in front of me was the first dog to enter my life. We initially put her in the crate in our car, but she cried so mom had to hold her. We eventually picked the name for this puppy, "Zoey", named after Elmo's friend on Sesame Street.
Zoey was a tough puppy to take care of at first; she would bite everybody's shoes and once stepped on my mom's finger causing it to fracture. As she got older, she learned the routine of sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom, and letting us know when she needed to. She also had mannerisms to her. Besides being well-behaved, she had a bark that would make her whole face shake and also her upper lip or jowl wouldn't come down all the way. To us, the face she made reminded us of Jim Carey's old In Living Color character, Fire Marshall Bill.
Then one day when I was in college, my mom called me when I was at school and told me Zoey went to the vet and they found a tumor on her spleen, three times the size of her spleen. I knew that was the beginning of the end; by that time, Zoey was old in her face and the rest of her body. Her eyes and legs were weakening and she had trouble walking around the house, hesitating to walk across the floor thinking that there was something she had to jump over. She would also make these loud gagging noises to clear her throat, which made my whole family laugh, but it could have been a sign of what she was having a problem with. Sure enough, the Monday before we were planning to head down to the Outer Banks, my mom told me to be prepared to say your goodbye. I lost a best friend that day. It was for her own good, though. She's not in pain anymore. I'll see her again someday. She was the best dog anyone could ask for and was a role model for Ziva and Wilson.
Ziva
Ziva came into my life when I was in high school. She was my family's effort to make Zoey more active since she was getting old. We picked her up at the same place we picked up Zoey, from the same breeder essentially. Ziva was indeed active. She seemed to have more "human" characteristics too; she's very skeptic of what's around her. She is afraid of a litany of things, nibbles people hands, sits on her butt and not her hind legs, barks at people like they're serial killers even if they're children, her hair stands up on her spine whenever frightened, sometimes watches TV, squints her eyes and curls her ears when excited, and also used to pee when excited. She learned something from Zoey when it came to manners and also bonded with her too. She enjoyed playing outside with Zoey and played indoors as well. Since Zoey's passing though, she's had difficulty eating because she would always wait for Zoey to be next to her. We just have to pet her and say "it's OK" and she'll eat. We have Zoey's ashes in a red box in our back living room and sitting on top of the box is her old camouflage collar. Whenever Ziva gets a whiff of that, she'll go nuts.
Apparently she also recognizes logos too.....the Adidas logo in particular. She knows when I take her for a walk cause I wear my Adidas or Nike shoes. You couldn't even say certain words around the two of them like "walk" or "eat", cause they go bonkers. She seems to play the role of being the "middle generation" of the family of dogs within my family. Ziva remains active, but remembers Zoey quite well and is now the teacher to the newest member of my family, Wilson.
Wilson
Wilson is different from the fact that he's a rescue dog and from Wilson, North Carolina. Because Ziva was having trouble being by herself, we decided to check out an event the local WAGS, a dog rescue adoption group, was having. PAWS named him "Helios" after a plant. Why? I don't know. He was the most behaved out of the dogs there, and many other families were possibly interested in the adoption of the dog who would eventually be named "Wilson". As mentioned earlier, we changed his name to Wilson because of his origin from Wilson, North Carolina. His name also reminds me of the Wilson volleyball Tom Hanks befriends in Cast Away, or the Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, and even Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, or perhaps the female group Wilson Phillips: the daughters of the Wilsons who were in the Beach Boys (I felt like I just gave you a tongue twister with all of the different "Wilsons"). Even though Wilson was a tiny pup, Ziva was her usual self, looking nervous and afraid even though Ziva is three times the size of her. Wilson has also developed the quirk that he chases laser pointers, light reflections from phones and mirrors, birds, and squirrels. Ziva doesn't like it when Wilson whines and chases the lights, she gets wound up about the birds and squirrels just because Wilson does. He's fit right into the family and helped Ziva be more active.
The moral of the story is that dogs will give something special to your family and yourself. Each dog had their own personality and I wished Zoey lived a little bit longer to have met Wilson. Never know how Zoey would've reacted.
