Puppy breath...

You ever smell a puppies breath? That sweet mixture of fur, fun and innocence. Nothing compares to the nuzzly warmth of a puppies breath and kisses.
Raising one is a chore to be sure. There is a never ending list of things that can be involved in teaching and training a new puppy the finer art (for dogs) of indoor living. It doesn't take long before you have the prerequisite selection of rubber bones, assorted chew toys, leashes, lines, snacks, sacks (oops), collars, dishes, pads, brushes and a bazzilion other necessary items.
You will also have a closet full of sneakers, flip flops, flats and sandals that are all tooth marked, chewed and shredded.
Whether you want it or not, you will eventually have a list of vet bills, grooming shop bills, pet supply store bills and other assorted expenditures. If you are lucky enough to get a free mutt from someone/somewhere it won't take long before that free mutt has cost you a fortune.
But somehow, in the long run, it all seems worth it. If you get a good one...and most are. And if you love them like you love your kids, you'll get a number of really great years of companionship, laughter, fun and tears for a few measly bucks.
It all starts with puppy breath.

We have four dogs at present. Up until just a few short weeks ago we had five. Four of those five were large outdoor dogs. I say outdoor dogs because when you have dogs that weigh in at around 75 to 80 pounds average, you just don't have room in the house for them all. And if you love them like I do, it doesn't seem fair to have a favorite allowed in the house and the rest outside. So, though on occasion we will let one lounge in the living room for a bit, for the most part they live in a spacious back yard. They have shelter, shade, water and lots of grass to romp in. They earn their keep by keeping the wolves at bay. They are the best part of my home security system.
Of those four, three were papered boxers. I've never spent a dime on the purchase of a dog....not in my entire life. Every dog I've ever owned somehow ended up at my front door of it's own or some third party intervention.
Cash, the largest of the boxers showed up five years ago in one of our local ices storms that wander through in mid to late February.
He was pretty scary when he first showed up. I opened the front door and there was this 80+ pound, beautiful, regal looking boxer standing on my front porch. We have dogs in the neighborhood that wander around from time to time, but I had never seen him before. My first thought, as I saw him standing there, head up, alert and intelligent looking (clipped ears, docked tail and a pure classic boxer face) was that he must be some official type dog. I wasn't aware of any boxer K-9's, but he looked too confident and purposeful to be wandering unfettered. He had a collar with several tags attached so I assumed he had a home and was someones master (he had that air).
I ran him off after I figured out there wasn't anyone accompanying him. He didn't argue, he just trotted off the porch and gave me a disdainful look back over his shoulder as he left, like "thanks pal".
It was freezing outside so I quickly went back inside. After a bit, I heard some commotion on the front porch again and looking out saw that he was paws up on the porch rail where the cats food dish was placed. As I opened the door to look through the storm door he looked over at me again. I noticed that while he was a fine looking specimen of a boxer and had obviously been well cared for, he was just a bit on the gaunt side in the flanks.
I thought of running him off again, but as it was getting dark and about 12 degrees outside, the soft side of my brain starting getting involved. I thought the least I could do was send him off the next morning with a bit of Spot fuel in his tank. A bit warily I will admit, I stepped to one side and motioned him through the front door. He didn't hesitate but just walked on by me and then stood in the center of the living room floor. I spoke to him....those blathering words we say to animals like they know exactly what we are saying. "Who are you handsome?, Where do you live?, What you doing hanging around these parts?, Are you hungry?", all in that high pitched whiny, baby talk voice we employ when talking to animals. When I said, "hungry?", his ears perked up and he looked me full in the eyes and said "yep". Well, he didn't actually articulate the words but there was little doubt in my mind that at the word "hungry" he was on full alert.
So I took him in the kitchen and rattled out a bowl of dry food and added a bit of canned on top for good measure. I set the bowl on the floor and he looked at me expectantly. I motioned towards the bowl and he swallowed it whole. Well, I lied again. He actually inhaled the entire contents of the bowl in about thirty seconds. It wasn't a small bowl of food either. Assuming he was up for seconds, I poured another half bowl in and it soon became history as well. Following that up with a pan of water, he seemed content for the time being. I walked into the living room and called to him and he followed all dignified and mannerly.
We kinda looked at each other for a few minutes. I guess to get each others bearings. I finally gathered the nerve to actually approach him. He watched me warily but didn't argue with me when I reached for his collar to inspect his tags. They were current. He had a rabies tag and a license tag and a tag that had the name and number of his vet stamped on it.
By this time we were looking at around 7 or 8 in the evening so I knew the vet wouldn't be open that late. I figured we had a house guest for the evening so we settled in for the night. He seemed content to lay on the floor under the coffee table on the throw rug and just watch the room. I let him out just before we all went to bed and he danced around the frozen snow for a few minutes before taking care of business then made his way back up on my porch.
I called the vet the next morning and identified the dog. Their was a short serial number on the tag and they were able to pull up their records and give me his name and age. They indicated that they knew Cash well and that he was a frequent visitor to their clinic. He was a pedigreed animal and it seems that's where he got his shots and no see um gear from. They also had a phone number on file for the owners and indicated that they would contact them. I gave them my phone number and expected to hear from someone shortly.
By the end of the day we had yet to hear anything. So I fed our guest again and let him romp around in the ice and snow in our backyard. That evening was a reprisal of the one before and he behaved himself as a gentleman should. I was actually quite impressed with his manner and attitude.
The next morning I called the vet again and the receptionist indicated that she had made contact with the owners and found that they had given Cash to a family member some weeks back. She gave them my number and was given an assurance that someone would contact me.
A couple of days went by and no one called. I called the vets again and they said there wasn't much else they could do. We already had a dog at the time (you must have guessed that as I had dog fuel on hand). Sam is our fat yellow lab we've had for several years...he's almost twelve now so must have been around 5 or 6 then.
His is another hard luck story gone good in that he met my wife at the local gas station one night, during the winter several years prior, as a butterball puppy who appeared to have been either abandoned or had fallen unknown out of someones car. He picked her to be his surrogate so she brought him in. He never left.
I ran a bail bond business at the time and had some "running" to do. I couldn't leave Cash at the house by himself all day and the snow had thawed enough to move around so I figured I was gonna have to take him with me. I walked out to my car, opened the door and motioned him in. He took one look at me and hopped in. He stepped over the console and into the passenger seat and sat up like he was gonna be my co-pilot, looked over at me and said, "what are we waiting for". Well he didn't actually say those words you understand, but there was no doubt in my mind that that was what he was thinking.
I popped her in gear and away we went. I had an office in town and we went there first. Took care of some paperwork and then made a couple of stops to collect some funds owed. I stopped a couple of times and let him get out and eyeball a tree and he took care of his business smartly then made his way back to the co-pilots seat without any coaxing. I stopped at the office of a business associate and introduced him and his folks to Cash. I told them the story of how he came to be and that I had yet to hear from the owners. He indicated that his dad lived on a farm locally and that if push came to shove and Cash needed a place to bunk for awhile, he was welcome at the farm. We left and headed back to the house. I called the vet again with no new news. So we settled in for the night with the thought in my mind that the following day I would run him up to the farm. If and when the owners contacted me it wouldn't be any problem to retrieve him.
The next morning we hopped in the car again with one stop intending to be the farm. Never made it. We got busy elsewhere and ended back at the house together again. This routine went on for two more days. The farm wasn't exactly close, maybe 45 miles away and things were pretty busy for me then, so we just didn't make the trip.
Then one day at the end of the week, Cash and I made a call to a pick-up I had to do. With no right way to do wrong, one of my clients wasn't getting it straight and I had to put him back in jail. That's part of the business. Normally, if there was any indication that it was going to be an issue, I'd take some backup with me. But this was a young man who I figured I could handle without much of a problem solo so away we went. I generally try to use some trickery on my pickups before I come out and say they gotta go back in. Coax them into the car on the pretext of updating some paperwork or the likes and then snap a cuff.
I had this young man in the passenger seat up front with Cash in the back minding his own business. When he got settled in the seat I punched the door locks with the override engaged (I drive a retired police car). Junior got the picture pretty quick that he wasn't gonna get to leave on his own and started getting noisy about his displeasure. At his raised voice we both heard a low grumble coming from the back seat. We both turned around at about the same time and there was Cash...standing up in the back seat, head about six inches away from Juniors ear. His own ears were pointed forward, as was his whole body posture and while he wasn't really bearing his fangs, he wasn't just smiling either. I was a bit intimidated myself...but Junior was clearly about to loose control of some critical body functions. I chuckled and said "Cash, ease up pal, he ain't gonna be a problem". Cash sat back down, Junior muttered an expletive and slowly extended his wrists in my direction.
It was a short trip to the sheriffs salliport where we unloaded Junior. One of the guards was passing my vehicle as I was saddling back up afterwards and noticing Cash asked me if I had a new partner. I chuckled and said he was a loaner and we headed back to the house.
The next morning I called the vet back and told them sorry, but Cash was off the market.
He's ridden shotgun with me every since.

As I previously mentioned, we had three papered boxers. Cash being one, the other two are a set of siblings. Chiefy and Jazzie came to me about the same way, only different. I had a guy working with me for a short time that had a thing for boxers. He worked in my office doing paperwork and from time to time would accompany me on my rounds. One day he got online with the boxer recovery website and noticed they had a brace of boxers locally that were looking for a home. He left for lunch that day and mentioned that he was going to go give them a once over.
He currently had been living in an apartment and was looking for a house to move into so he could have a/some dogs. So it was a kind of scouting mission he was on. Sorta. He came back about two hours later and had this brace of boxer pups with him. I say pups, but they were actually somewhere around 18 months old at the time. Real nice looking dogs. Around 65 to 70 pounds each, the female was actually a bit stockier than the male. Though neither had the refined profile that Cash possesses (in fact Jazzie had the classic boxer flat nose that lent her a face that, in my opinion, only a mother could love but she was so ugly she was cute, if you know what I mean), both were beautiful examples of pure bred boxers. Jazzie was all white...not albino, because she had spots on her hide that showed up when she was wet...but snow white other than her obsidian black eyes. Absolutely made you fall in love to look at her. She was also deaf....as a post. I understand that often tightly bred animals have a tendency to inherit recessive genes that often lead to malfunctions of one sort or another.
Chiefy was your classic boxer in color. Mostly a light brown with a broad white chest and black points. He has white feet and a beautiful profile. Like I said, more slender than his sister he is nevertheless a fine example of boxer breeding.
Both dogs, when put on a leash, would move in tandem like two dolphins swimming through the sea. Jazzy was always just a half a heartbeat back from Chiefy, letting him take the lead. She watched him constantly...I'm guessing he was her ears.
So anyhow, my man comes back with these two pups and says he's taking them out for a trial spin. I can dig that with a car...but with a dog it's a bit harder to swallow.
My office had a large storage place in the rear so he turned them loose in there for the "afternoon".
We have to take a short rabbit hole here, for I must refer to a note in an earlier post where I mentioned that a guy I had working for me absconded with some 12 thousand in retail value merchandise. Well, this was the guy and it just so happened that this was the weekend that I discovered the loss. He was supposed to keep the dogs over the weekend but couldn't take them home to his apartment. So the plan was for him to let them roam the 1200 square feet of storage place adjacent to my office and for him to check on them frequently.
I tried to call him late Saturday afternoon to see how all that was going but got no response. My concern over the dogs being indoors for an extended period of time led me to make a trip to the office. Wherefore I discovered that he apparently hadn't been back since the night before. The pups, being in a strange environment or being excited or just plain being dogs, had eaten the place. Unlike some earlier statements I made that could be referred to as exaggerations...this statement is not. They ate the place.
At one time there had been a kitchen area involved in the footage. While all the appliances had been long since removed there was an area of perhaps 150 square feet of linoleum floor covering. Complete with terminations strip where it ended. It was gone. Or rather it was everywhere. Scattered in very small pieces. The aluminum strip was warped, chewed, bent and otherwise gnawed to unrecognisability. Several pieces of pvc plumbing pipe that had been used to plumb the refrigerator and whatelse were gnawed into small pieces everywhere. They had gotten under the sink in the head and everywhere you looked, there were small pieces marginally recognized as toilet paper, paper towels, toothpaste, soap, plunger, paper towel holder, toilet paper holder, curtains, blinds....anything that wasn't nailed down....and given the edge strip....some things that were nailed down. As you know, what goes in must come out. There was some very interesting looking detritus laying everywhere.
As it was late and I was already late getting home...I loaded the dogs up and took them with me. I mentioned I have a big back yard. My intention was to keep them there until I could get up with Ickobod and have him either transport them to his new place, their old place or somewhere other than my place.
The following day I returned to the office, noted that he had yet to appear and proceeded to undertake damage control. I cleaned everything up, discarded what was salvageable and was preparing to leave when a thought struck me. The curio shop we had a joint venture in was immediately adjacent to the office space I rented. Owned by the same outfit it had adjoining rooms with doors throughout. The curio store had a glass front facing the street and a slightly smaller area in the back than my office. It was there we had boxes of sunglasses, racing memorabilia, trinkets, jewelry, baseball cards, dvd's etc. stacked and stored. Inspecting some of the boxes led me to inspect all of the boxes and in most I only found a small sample of what they had originally contained. He had been taking the inventory out to the swap meets on the weekends and selling it. Approximately 12 thousand dollars worth of retail stuff was gone. Two days later he was too. And I had grown two more dogs.

I've tried several times...actually constantly..over the last couple of years to unload the dogs. But they are a pair. Jazzy depends on Chiefy for her ears and they are inseparable. I could never find anyone who wanted to take both together and with Jazzy's hearing problem, no one wanted her. So they stayed. We fell in love with them and last winter when Jazzy escaped (I left the gate open taking my motorcycle out) she spent four days in the rain while I frantically tried to find her. We had an area wide dragnet set up with folks I never met before circling the streets trying to find my lost, deaf, baby. We finally found her and I brought her home...I have a picture of her laying in the backyard the next day with one paw thrown over her brothers neck...nestled together like siamese twins.
Jazzy was a sweetheart of the finest order. Whenever I drove up all the dogs would start barking. But Jazzy couldn't hear the car coming or anything for that matter, so she looked to Chiefy. Whenever she saw him barking it was always a chorus. Bark bark!. Bark bark!. Jazzy followed a split second after Chiefy with a monotone, highpitched bark unique all to her. Late at night whenever something stirred the dogs and they started barking (lots of incentive in my neighborhood for that) if you didn't hear bark bark!, you knew Jazzy didn't get the memo.

We lost Jazzy a couple of weeks ago. You'll have to give me a second here to regroup.....
It ripped the very heart from my chest.
TC and I had been sunning in the back yard...actually scorching would be a better descriptive. Chase lounges side by side...had a sprinkler dusting us with drizzle and a couple of cold drinks we were trying to shield from the sun and the dogs...who were want to come visiting. But it was just so blasted hot the dogs were a nuisance. I shushed them away several times. Wasn't much of a strain on them of course....we were laying in the sun, where it was hot and they were drifting over from time to time from the shade of the trees. Most of the time I just held up my hands before they ever got to us and they would turn around and saunter back to the shade of the tree. I really think they were just being polite and figured that if we were laying out there they were obligated to come over an nuzzle us.
We didn't last long because of the heat, so while TC was bundling towels and such up I went over to make sure their water supply was fresh and cool. All the dogs were around and all appeared fine. We went inside, showered up and were preparing to settle in front of the tv for an afternoon western (my fav) when there was a knock on the front door. Jon, the young man from next door was standing there and told me that the "little white dog" had a problem. He thought she might have hurt her leg or something. I thought "what the heck, we were just out there twenty minutes before, what could have they done in that time laying around in 100 degree sun?"
I went out and all the dogs were gathered around the water trough. Jazzy indeed had a problem. Her back right leg was listless and appeared to be hanging. I checked her out and it didn't look or feel broken, but she sure didn't have any control over it either. Within minutes both back legs had gone down and a feeling of deep dread was washing over me. I took her inside and made her as comfortable as possible. She was scared but did not appear to be in any pain. We called a friend who doubles as a vet assistant but didn't get much to go on.
The long and short of it was, I spent several hours with her that night. The next morning I spent several hours on the phone and on the internet researching possibles. She appeared to have suffered a spontaneous rupture of one of the discs in her spine which paralyzed her. Conversations with the vet said this was genetic and he gave little hope for her recovery so we had to have her "put down".
It took me days to get over it and to this day, I still anticipate the bark bark! whenever they get to going in the back yard.
Now that's a sad story and I know it....but it's not the end. Because as the scriptures say, there is a time for all things. Some things must go that others may fill their place.
And here's where we finally get to the punch line of "puppy breath".
Maybe three weeks before Jazzy went to heaven (all dogs go to heaven!), my graduating son and his girlfriend got the brainy idea that they were gonna have a "love child"....easy there! I taught him better than that! They got a puppy together. They had a plan. He was gonna support the "baby" for a couple of days, then she was gonna coddle her. You know, on the buddy plan. I said, "Uh-huh". "Now who's gonna be watching your "kid" when the two of you are at the movies?" Welllllll....yea that's what I thought.
Less than a week later at a joint family get together (his graduation party), grandma-in-law-to-be (maybe) pops up and announces that she is abdicating from the responsible party list. She doesn't have any time to be watching (and house training) a six-seven week old puppy. Grandpa-in-law to be (maybe) has never been on the list. No questions asked or answered there. I said "Uh-huh".
Three days later my son comes in and says they have made a momentous decision. They're gonna take the puppy back, to the pet store or to the pound, whatever comes first or easiest.
I said "whoa there sport, I'm taking you off the responsible party list." "We'll take care of finding her a home".
Two weeks later Jazzy left us. The next day my lovely and I were sitting on the front porch watching her take care of her puppy biz'nis and I looked over at her and told her...."you know what this means, right?" She said, "yep, already told the boys, Sadie stays".
Sadie is a thirteen week old yellow lab puppy with the sweetest disposition. She is such a presence in our lives. I love how she rolls her eyes and pops her jaws at me when she wants to play. Work is slow so I get the pleasure of spending my days playing and teaching her the finer art of living in doors. She is at my feet this very moment....chasing rabbits she's never seen in her sleep. Or maybe she's having a dog conversation with Jazzie....I've heard they have an uncanny ability to see and hear things we can't...who knows.
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.....sometimes he uses puppy breath to soften the blow...........