Gypsy died today

June 7, 2011

Our dog for over 12 years, Gypsy, died today. She was a city dog for the first nine years of her life, with a fenced back yard as her home until we retired to Arkansas in 2007. Half Timberwolf, half German Shepherd, it was as if she found her 2nd springtime when she came to the mountains and saw winter snow for the first time. Her first year in Arkansas, Gypsy went into season, mated with 2 black labs and leaves behind her litter of two females, Red and Blue. It was a dog's life for Gypsy, but I think, to her, it was a good life, well lived.

Joshua brought Gypsy to our house the first time we saw her. He and Brandi had been living in Lafayette. One night a runaway car had bashed into his parked car, totaling it out with damage. The police could do nothing about finding the person who'd done the damage, and to make things even worse, when Joshua called work to say he would be late because his car was not driveable they fired him on the phone. Then the people he'd paid for one of their half timberwolf half Shepherd puppies called to tell him the dog was ready and he could come and get her. So our house in La Porte became home to a Josh, his pregnant wife Brandi and their six week old puppy.

Time passed and when Chloe was born, the dog learned to love the baby and the baby learned to love the dog. One of Chloe's first words was Gypsy.

The dog got big fast, and each of us spent some time training her to sit and wait and not to jump on anyone or push. She learned to sit in the chair for tall people to pet her and to lie down on the ground for the baby to pet her. She seemed to love us all and pats seemed to her to be better than a dish of food. She had good times when we'd feed her several times a day, one of us thinking the other one of us had not fed her yet, and she had bad times when she'd have to beg for someone to fill her water dish because it was so hot in Houston. She loved the attention when we were in the back yard in the spa or cooking on the grill or just sitting and talking outside.

Time passed and Joshua moved out, leaving the puppy who had by now grown into a dog with Mike2 to become his pet. More time passed and Sonny (Mike2) moved out and could not have a pet where he moved so Mike and I kept Gypsy and took care of her. There were times when Gypsy would bask in the love of her old masters, Joshua and his little girls always went to visit Gypsy when they visited us. And Sonny moved back into the house and started feeding Gypsy again...but mostly she was our dog, living in our back yard, seldom leaving unless Sonny would take her on a leash to walk the neighborhood or unless she was able to open the gate and escape. She knew where her food dish was, though, and she always came back home. Our biggest fear was that someone would be afraid of her and hurt her, but she was shy when she got out and when anything startled her, she'd make a beeline back to her gate.

Gypsy was a sweet lady. She would stand still to be brushed, She always sat waiting until someone told her it was time to eat from her food dish. She loved to play ball and a big old soccer ball was her favorite. She loved water and being wet. She was a terrible digger in our back yard, looking always for a cooler spot deeper in the ground. There was a trail around the bottom of our fence where she walked every day, killing all the grass. And once, she became friends with a dog that moved in next door and it was almost as much as we and the next door neighbors were able to do to keep the holes under the fence from ever getting big enough for either of the dogs to crawl into the other dog's yard. That was life for Gypsy for nine years.

Then we moved to Arkansas. We had planned to move Gypsy with our last load going to Arkansas, but the insurance lady said we could not leave the house abandoned in Arkansas so if we wanted to keep the insurance, we needed to move in there. Sonny moved in and Mike and I brought Gypsy to stay with him.

On the day it was time for her to go, we'd gotten a huge u-haul truck and to fill with our household goods. Ranzy had come over to help. Steven had loaned us a dog cage and Mike and Ranzy were discussing whether Gypsy would fit inside, she was so much bigger than Steven's dog. They called her over and put her on a leash and led her to the cage and she went right in. They immediately carried the cage out and loaded it into the back part of the Isusu that I was going to drive. Gypsy didn't argue. I decided I was going to leave that very instant whether my car was fully loaded or not. I wanted to get on the road for the 7 hour drive to Arkansas to get the dog to her new home as soon as possible. Gypsy was an angel. I got hungry and thirsty and wanted a bathroom break, but Gypsy just stood and looked the whole time, never crying or making a sound, putting up with my driving and throwing her about in the crate. I stopped once in Atlanta and Gypsy waited patiently for me to do my business and get back on the road. When I got to the house in Arkansas, though, and she saw Sonny come out, she was ready to get OUT of that cage and she was really glad to see him. She knew she was his girl!

At first, in Arkansas, Gypsy was tethered. She was pretty bad about tangling up her cable, though and we were bad about wanting her to have plenty of rope to tangle. We wanted her to be able to move over our big back yard. Finally we put up a fence wire around the back of the house so she'd have a fenced yard. It was not a very stable fence, but Gypsy never tried to get out. We might have stayed with that fence forever, but Gypsy went into season and howled and cried and lured a couple of black labs to come inside the fence. One lab was young and sprightly and he leaped the fence in a single bound, no problem. The other old lab was broad shouldered and had some white hair around his face and he didn't jump the fence. That wily dog would go all around the bottom of the fence pushing on the wire until he'd find a place that had enough slack him to squeeze himself underneath. Needless to say Mike and I chased the dogs off when we'd see them. That young dog would jump and run and disappear as soon as we'd open the door. That old dog, though, nothing made him move. I yelled and told him to go home and threatened him with the broom and nothing seemed to matter to him. All I could do was bring Gypsy inside until I'd see him leave (and see the spot where he knew he could get under the fence). I'd fix the places where that old dog got in, but he was back the next night, until after a few days Gypsy went out of season and the labs quit coming to 'visit' her. A little while later we had a chain link fence installed around the back yard, and I never saw those black labs again (although I think they live not too far from us.)

That was in the fall of our first year here (2007) and winter followed. It was a beautiful winter. When we heard it was going to snow Mike called his brother Danny and told him that if he wanted to get here before the roads iced over he should make the trip that very day. The first night of Danny and Pam's visit, Gypsy cried and moaned and howled and tried to dig in under the back porch. Danny's wife Pam said that she sounded like she was in labor. Mike said it was too cold for her and that she was scared by the snow she'd never seen before, so he made a place for her to come inside to the sun porch. The next morning I was up early, but not as early as Danny. When he saw me awake, he said, "I hear more than one voice in that sun room."

When I went to look, surprise! Gypsy had a squeaky little puppy nursing. Just one. How cute it was all tiny and sweet, all black. Gypsy was proud of it, too and didn't seem to be worried about all of us coming to look and touch. She seemed to be wanting to show it off. That night, again inside, this time with her puppy, Gypsy was once more whining, but I thought that perhaps her labor had been hard on her and that she was not comfortable being a new mother. That wasn't it. She was in labor again. The next morning was just like the one before. Danny, up early, when he saw me awake told me that he thought it sounded like there were two puppies. And, sure enough Gypsy DID have two puppies. A whole day apart, both of them looked like black labs almost twins, it was hard to tell the difference or to know which one was born on Saturday night and which one on Sunday. At first that was their names, Saturday and Sunday. Later on, though, Mike got them two tiny little collars, one red, and one blue...and then we could tell them apart and it's almost needless to say that we named them, one Red and the other one Blue.

Gypsy was the best puppy mom ever. She took wonderful care of those babies. She was a hoot, though. We put her outside with her babies and set up a nice new clean plastic garden toolbox, big enough for her to get completely inside and out of the rain and shelter from the wind...but Gypsy, having always been an outside dog and being part wolf was not happy with that situation. She'd drag those puppies out of that box and put them onto the dirt. Once it rained, and Mike had to go outside and get the puppies out of a low spot Gypsy had dug before they drowned when the hole filled up with water. Finally Mike solved that problem by filling the bottom of the toolbox with dirt...then she was happy to keep herself and her babies inside and out of the weather. And the puppies grew fast. At first I could hold them both, one in each hand, but it was just a matter of months and I could not pick both of them up at once, they were too heavy. Gypsy seemed happy when we started teaching them to sit and not to jump on us or to come up on the porch unless we invited them. They have been terrible, like their mother, though, chewing everything and digging holes. And they pestered Gypsy so that after awhile Mike and I began to notice that "Mom" was a very strict mother, snapping and growling and threatening them when they would gang up and pester her. The pups wanted to play, but Gypsy was getting old and she made them play with each other while she watched.

That was the beginning of us seeing that Gypsy was old. Last winter we let her up on the porch because she walked so slow and the cold and snow seemed to bother her more than they had the year before. And her teeth seemed to bother her so we started giving her canned dog food. We kept on feeding her puppies the dry food and they were really jealous of Gypsy and tricky as ever, they'd do their best to get her food away from her so they could share it. Red would run to the fence barking as if someone were here...and if Gypsy would be tricked into going, too then Blue would grab Gypsy's dish. Gypsy usually ignored Red and Blue when they were pestering her, but toward her end, she seemed to be losing her patience.

When I would go out to see the dogs, Red and Blue would come up to meet me, but Gypsy didn't make the effort. Stayed mostly by the back door to the lower level as if hoping that Sonny would come out that door to talk to 'his girl'. She was in the shade there and I suppose the cement there was cool. Today she wasn't there. She was under the porch at the door on the end of the house, the one that leads out of the laundry room. And when I called to her she didn't even look up and I knew she was gone to wherever old dogs go. I'll miss Gypsy. She was sweet and gentle and pretty and always tried to mind and earn pats trying to be whatever you wanted her to be.

She's left behind two offspring, both of whom seem to exhibit some of her characteristics. I wonder if a dozen years from now I'll be lamenting Red's or Blue's death and saying that dog was just the best!??!

I told Mike and Mike told his granddaughters and his son that Gypsy was gone. They buried her down toward the front of the property near where the big tree uprooted last month during the bad weather. This evening Chloe, her sister, and the girls' grandma and grandpa went down to the site and placed a cement stone shaped like the state of Texas with the word Gypsy painted on it. Each of us asked that she now rest in peace, blessed her and spoke of what a good dog she had always been.

That dog Gypsy was just the best!