Under-stated dog lover

Tom Pinney

I mentioned last week that I think cats hate me because they can sense that I’m a dog person, and I feel like I may have misspoken, because the phrase “dog person” doesn’t fully encapsulate how much I love dogs.

I am that kid that, if I see even a picture of a dog, I am distracted. Immediately, my focus shifts away from whatever I’m doing, and I want to shower that dog with love and attention and scratch them in that special spot right behind the ear.

It’s actually really funny to my friends how distracted I get when dogs are brought into a conversation. There was this one time where I was in the middle of a heated argument with a buddy of mine, probably about politics, and I’m in full throat on my soapbox being right, and out of nowhere, one of my other friends pulls up a picture of this ridiculously cute puppy in a teacup, and my entire argument train falls off the tracks as my expression changes from righteous indignation to “OH MY GOODNESS LOOK AT HIS LITTLE EARS!!!”

I’ve just always loved dogs, and I think it’s because there were only a select few times in my upbringing where my family didn’t own a dog.

When I was born, my parents owned a big ol’ bloodhound named Smoky. I don’t remember much of Smoky other than stories my dad would tell, because he died when I was very young, but apparently he and I were buds, and somewhere there used to be pictures of him snuggling up with baby me. (I don’t think they exist anymore; thanks, stupid tornado.)

Then came Blackie, a little black ball of fluff that we fostered for a little while until she was adopted. My older brother Tim got to name her. He’s so creative.

From there until I was 10, we subsided with my grandma’s dogs, Oscar (who was basically a southern New Mexico mutt), and when he died, Patches (a beautiful golden). When we moved to El Paso, we found Lucy and Leslie, two border collies whose owners abandoned them.

Those two ran off one day and we never found them, and not long after, we got Zeus, a black lab who bonded immediately with Tim. I was always jealous of the relationship Tim and Zeus had, and I wished a dog would pick me to bond with.

Zeus disappeared after a year or so, and Tim was near inconsolable. But it only took a few months before we got a call from a family friend saying they had an extra Weimaraner puppy that they needed to be rid of. And that’s how we got Lulu.

At first, she was scared; this was a big family, and she was basically unwanted. It took some time to train her and break her in, but when she was used to us, she picked me as her “person.”

I was so excited. I finally had “my” dog. She would sleep at the foot of my bed, snuggle up next to me for naps after school, and on nights where I came home late from work or being out with friends, she would stay up in the living room, waiting for me to get back.

She was also very protective. I remember one time, my dad yelling at me for something I did wrong, and apparently Lulu took my side, got between us, and started growling at my dad. We laughed it off, my dad apologized for raising his voice, and we were good.

When my dad and I left home one day in late August 2009 to move me into my dorm room at Ohio, Lulu was freaking out. She knew something was up when I was packing up most of my belongings and loading them into the truck.

She whined a little bit every time I left the house, and got really excited when I walked back in to grab more stuff. Then, when everything was loaded and ready to go, I walked back in to say goodbye to my faithful companion.

I scratched her behind the ear, kissed her on the head, and said goodbye. Almost instinctively, as if she knew I was moving on, she leaned her head into my shoulder, and we sat like that for a minute or two.

After I moved out to go to college, Lulu bonded with my little sister. Our relationship was the same when I came home – she got really excited and we picked up where we left off – but it was great to know that she was still showering my family with love in my absence.

By far, we had Lulu the longest, but dogs don’t last forever. In 2015, with Lulu in her advanced years, my mom decided to take her to a Weimaraner rescue to live out the rest of her life with a huge yard to run around in and people there 24/7 to care for her and love on her in a way that we no longer could.

I called up the rescue and asked them if they could keep me in the loop and let me know what happened. I wanted to make sure everything was okay, and they told me that they would give me periodic updates on how she was doing.

In October of that year, I got a call I never wanted to get. Lulu had gone in for minor surgery and they found a major problem, one that, even if fixed, would have only extended her life by a little bit. So they decided to keep her under and let her pass peacefully.

I cried for days after that happened. It still hurts me to think about it, how scared she must have been going into the vet’s office that morning, how much I wish I could have been there to pet her and say everything would be alright.

How much I wish I could have been there to say goodbye to her one last time.

Wow, two years later and this is still hard to write about.

I know she’s in a better place now, and I know that she never questioned how much I loved her, even right until the end. But it’s hard to remember that sometimes when the “what ifs” keep creeping up on you.

That’s also why I will always love dogs, why I will always want to shower them with as much attention as I can give them, and why I will always be a dog person.

There’s very little that petting a dog won’t immediately cure.

Tom Pinney is a news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum.