Sassy –

*** Please note: this post is a bit lengthy, so plan to be here awhile… and have some tissues handy for when you get to the end of it.

They say when you are not looking for love, that’s when it comes along. The same seems to be true for dogs… at least a large part of the time. When I first saw Sassy, it was right at the end of Summer, 2010. I remember it well, because it was the Census year, and I was working 3 part-time jobs, one of which was as an Enumerator for the Census Bureau. I was living in a mobile home park in a small town in Central Texas, which I was the Manager of as well. This mobile home park was situated at the edge of country, and there was a lake nearby, so it was a prime target for people to drop off unwanted animals there.

At the front end of the mobile home park, there was a large 50-unit boat storage building. I came home one day to discover that 2 puppies had been dropped off and were hanging around behind that boat storage building. My first thought was, “I don’t have time for these puppies”, but of course I ended up making time for them anyway. No one could get near them; they were just too skittish. They looked to be about 4 or 5 months old, and I had no idea how long they had been on their own. Several tenants started feeding them, the park owners started feeding them, and I, myself, started feeding them.

I cooked up some chicken patties that I had found in my freezer and tore them into chunks. Then I went up to the front of the park and behind the boat storage and sat down on a cinder block. The pups were there, but they would not come up to me, even though they could smell the food I had in my hands. So, I tossed a few chunks to encourage them, and then held one chunk out in my hand. One pup ventured nearer, stretching her muzzle out as far as possible to get the piece of chicken patty without coming any closer than she had to… and I let her take it. Then I held out another piece, and she did the same thing, but this time I held onto it and she only got the tip of it. What she did next was to sit down and bark at me! I said, “Well, aren’t you a sassy little thing!”, and thus, that pup was named: Sassy.

I got with the park owner, who was (and still is) a good friend of mine, and we worked together to trap the pups in my yard. I had a fenced yard, so I led the pups down the road to my place with pieces of chicken patties and then led them through the fence gate. Once they went through the gate, she closed it, and those pups were contained. I had actually tried it by myself, but I could only catch Sassy in my yard, and I’ll be darned if she didn’t find a weak spot in my fence and escape! But I saw where she got out, and I repaired it, so this time, even though she went straight to that same spot, she was trapped, along with her brother.

We (my oldest son and I) named the other pup “Buster”. We wormed them, just to be safe, and it turned out that Buster was bloated due to worms, although we did not see any sign of worms in Sassy. Once the bloat was gone though, we could see the wrinkles, plus Buster’s tongue was almost solid purple, so we knew: the pups were part Shar Pei. I was a little concerned, because we had a Shar Pei mix dog already that had horrible skin allergies. Still, there wasn’t anything to do except work with the pups to see if we could socialize them and find them homes. It didn’t take long before the pups came running with their whole bodies wagging whenever we fed them… they had been on their own long enough to know hunger, for sure! It also didn’t take long to find out who the “Boss” of those two was… it was Sassy. I know this because one day Buster finished his food first and then tried to take some of hers, and they fought… and Sassy won! Buster was left to lick his wounds… well, just one wound really, just a nip on his front leg… but he left her food alone after that!

As the weeks went by, Sassy made excellent progress. It only took a few weeks before we could pet her, and a strong bond was forming between me and her. My friend, the park owner, noticed, and she let me know that I could keep Sassy. See, there were rules in the park regarding dogs that I, as manager, needed to abide by as well. Basically, one dog that wasn’t over 40 lbs., or 2 dogs that together weren’t over 40 lbs. We had a dog already who weighed around 35 lbs., but she was an old dog, and my friend knew this. So, she let me keep Sassy, knowing that Rosie, our old dog, would not be there much longer. She would do the same for tenants, so it was a good solution, since that bond was strengthening daily.

That left Buster to find a home for, and I wanted to find him a home quickly, since these pups were pretty close to 6 months by this time, and I was afraid Sassy would come in heat… and we didn’t want them hooking up. Buster was harder to work with than Sassy, though. He would come up to us with his tail wagging, his tongue out, all happy to see us… but as soon as you tried to pet him, off he would go. This went on for a month at least. Finally, I trapped him in a corner of the fence, but then when I pet him, there was simply no reaction at all. It was as if he turned into a statue. I had never dealt with a dog like this before, and I confess, I didn’t really know how to help him. I just knew he needed lots of love and patience, so I placed an ad on Craig’s list stating as much, and hoped for the best. Let me tell you, the “best” did happen for Buster! A wonderful lady come out to see him, and at first, she wasn’t sure, but then she decided that, yes, she would take him. She asked if she could come back on Christmas Eve to get him. Well, I told her she could, but I had a feeling I would not see her again… and I was wrong! She did come back, she did take him, and she still has him! She gives me updates on him from time to time, and I am so happy that he found such a great home, and has such a great person to love and care for him!

Then it was time to get Sassy used to the house. We had a small laundry room that had a door, and that was where she slept at night, at first. I don’t know if she had ever been in a house, but she did really well. During the day she was in the house if we were in there. After a few days of doing like this, a lucky thing happened that made house-training easy. Sassy was in the living room and I happened to be nearby and was watching her when she went into the “pee-stance”. I yelled, “No!”, and she jumped up, totally confused… and I took her outside immediately to pee. She did pee, and she got all kinds of praise, and she was good as gold from that day onward. It didn’t take long before she was sleeping beside my bed at night. I debated on letting her sleep in the bed with me, but decided against it. I love her, but I really don’t want my bed to smell like “dog”, and then there’s all the dog hair as well… but she has her own bed right beside mine, and she is happy. And yes, she DOES get on my bed when I am at work… but I try to turn a blind eye to that.

I kept waiting for Sassy to come in heat, but never saw any sign of it until a short time after she turned a year old. I do wonder if maybe she had a light heat that I missed, but I was waiting for that to come and pass before I got her fixed. I opted not to let her have puppies because I know she is part Shar Pei and that breed just has so many health issues… so I did not want to promote it. Besides that, there are already so many dogs and puppies that are here already that need good homes. Once her heat passed, I got her fixed, and chipped as well.

She has been a great dog. Very low-maintenance for feeding: put food in her bowl, watch her scarf it down within, like, a whole minute or two. She has never been destructive to furniture, doors, etc. She did ruin 3 pairs of my shoes though, before she learned not to do that, but instead chew on her own toys. Her coloring is a beautiful golden hue, so I tend to call her my, “Golden Girl”. When she was young, she would crack us up by running in circles on the living room floor. I’ve come to realize that the carpet we had was such that it provided just the right traction for her to do that. What made it funny though, was that she would go so fast that it looked like her rear end was floating… we could not see how fast her hind feet were moving… it was just so much fun to watch!

Over time, we came to realize that Sassy had had some trauma in her life. She is terrified of thunder storms. We did try the Thunder Shirt… it did not work for her. She is also terrified of small children. I do not know what caused that, but I highly doubt it was any child’s fault. She is shy when meeting people at first, but will warm up slowly. It depends on how the people act. If someone tries and tries to pet her, it just makes her shyer and pushes her away. But if someone just ignores her, she will get curious and come around sniffing… these are the people she takes to the fastest. She loves other dogs, and she loves cats. She actually might love cats a little too much, as she tends to fixate on them, but there are worse things a dog can do. We did have several cats at this time, and Sassy got used to them, just as they got used to her… everyone got along just fine. Then, we acquired a feral kitten who became Sassy’s “bud”. Those two had so much fun playing together, and it was so unusual, but great, to see a 40 lb. dog and a 14 lb. cat interacting like that!  And I will tell his story at some point… when I can. His name was Yo-Yo, and I still miss him dearly.

It was around this time that my youngest son, who had been deployed to Afghanistan, came home from overseas. Now, if he had been home when we first got Sassy, I have no doubt that she would have been HIS dog. He loves dogs with a passion and I am sure she would have bonded strongly with him from the start… but, by the time he came home, she had already formed that bond with me, and so, he set out to win her over. His choice of ammo was food… and Sassy packed on 4 extra pounds during this process! We quickly nixed this practice, and then trimmed her back down. I do think that overweight dogs do not live as long, or as healthily, as otherwise, so I have always maintained her weight to keep her healthy. I also have always fed her a quality dog food, and while she does get a few people-food treats here and there, it’s not overdone. And she has always been very healthy and issue-free, which has tended to make me think I was doing the right thing.

So, a few years went by, and then one day my daughter came by and asked me if I would be willing to move to the Great Pacific Northwest. Well, at that time I was working 3 jobs, and each one was stressful in its own way. I had been doing like that for several years, and it was catching up with me, so the idea of a new place and a new life was very appealing. But mainly, I couldn’t let whole family, especially my 2 grandsons, get that far away from me! So, I said, “Sure, I’ll move with you guys”, and we loaded up the truck and we moved to…. Oregon! (Ha! bet you thought I was gonna say, “Beverly”!)

It took us 4 days driving across the country to get there, and Sassy did just great. She rode with me in the cab of my truck. I had fixed up a bed for her by placing a crate upside-down in front of the passenger seat with an old couch cushion on it. That way she could lay down comfortably and sleep when she wanted. We only stopped at hotels that took pets, since we had 3 cats along with Sassy, and all of the animals did really well on the trip. The cats all rode in carriers in my truck bed. I had a camper shell, and the weather was not too hot or cold, so it worked out perfectly. Sassy would pee just fine whenever we stopped, but she would not go poo. Not the first day, nor the second, or the third. I was getting concerned, but my daughter looked it up, and apparently, it’s a “dog thing” … they just don’t go poo when travelling. At one of the places we stopped for gas, I was walking Sassy, and she picked up a sticker in one of her front paws. Now, I call them “stickers”, but others might call them something else, like, “pickers”. They really hurt when you step on one, though. I plucked it out of her paw, and all seemed fine. One of the hotels we stayed in was famous for being haunted, but I saw no ghosts. We had an upstairs room though, and Sassy had her first experience with riding an elevator… and she did great!

We finally got to our destination and, initially, Sassy and I ended up staying in an RV for a time. My youngest son decided to join us out here, so he stayed in the RV with me, Sassy, and the 3 cats. Sassy had to adapt to not having a yard to run around in, so my son and I started taking her to dog parks, which was loads of fun for her. She might be shy around people, but she always loves other dogs instantly! There was only one dog that ever intimidated her, and he was a Bernese Mountain Dog, so it’s understandable! He was a big teddy-bear, really sweet, but I think Sassy saw him as a GIANT… lol! It was while we were living in the RV that we noticed that at times, Sassy would limp. But then, she would walk normal… just on and off like that, for several days. Finally, I took her to the vet. It turned out that she had some kind of cyst behind one of her front toes. I don’t know what caused it, but I did think back to that sticker she had gotten in her paw on our trip, and I will always wonder if maybe a tiny part of the tip stayed in and caused the cyst. An operation was required for removal, and since she would be under anesthesia, we went ahead and had her teeth cleaned at the same time. She recovered well from that small operation. We had gotten her a “Wound Boot”, and I think it helped a lot. Sassy is fastidious about keeping her paws clean, and she would not leave the wound alone unless we put that boot on her, plus, whenever she went out, it kept it clean. Just FYI, the boot is red and black, which coincides with Deadpool’s colors, so she gained the nickname: “Sassy-pool” … lol!

Later on, we moved into my daughter’s house, as she had found a place large enough for all of us to live, and now Sassy has a fenced yard to run around in again, which is really nice. I work full-time, but my daughter doesn’t, and she has formed a nice bond with Sassy… especially when she takes her for walks and gets her Pup-a-chinos at the coffee kiosks! My daughter meets with her friends quite often to have coffee and walk their dogs, so Sassy has made a lot of friends, both people and dogs. The people at the coffee kiosks love her and shower her with treats. Once when my daughter and her friends met for coffee and dog-walking, they all got pooped on by a flock of seagulls! My daughter had to make an emergency grooming appointment for Sassy… my oh my, was she ever dirty, and stinky!

Now we’ve been here for a few years, and all seemed well, until just recently. A few weeks ago, I took Sassy to the vet… just a simple visit, to see about a small bump on her cheek. She also had not been eating well for a couple of days. I honestly thought it might be a small pocket of infection, connected with some tooth, or gum, issue. How I wish that were so! But no, it couldn’t be anything like that, or even anything curable at all. Instead, it’s cancer, but not just any cancer… it’s lymphoma. Her lymph nodes were swollen in her neck, behind her elbows, behind her knees, and the whites of her eyes were red… it was just awful. We ended up taking her to a specialist who explained how everything works. Basically, if I had the money for chemotherapy for her, which I don’t, we could get her into a 6-month treatment, which, best-case scenario, would put it into remission… for 1 to 1 and a half years. Then, it would come back, and we could do it all over again. I will not put her through that.

Instead, I will keep her on the Prednisone that the vet prescribed, and that has shrunken her swollen nodes to allow her to eat, until it stops working. The specialist said that it would, for sure, stop working, in probably 6 to 8 weeks. So, I have had to come to terms with the fact that I will have my beloved Sassy, not for the 6 or 8 more years that I hoped, but rather, for only a few more too-short months, at best. When the medicine stops working, I will do what needs to be done to keep her from suffering, and she will be set free to cross that Rainbow Bridge and join her “bud”, Yo-Yo, on the other side. Until that time comes, I will love her all that I can and have as much fun with her as I can… and I will treasure every minute or our time! That’s why I decided to write her story now, while I still have her, and while I still can… because afterwards, I won’t be able to, not for a long, long time anyways.

Update on Sassy:

Well, that dreaded day came much faster than I knew. Just last weekend, May 18, 2019, my son and I took my beautiful Golden Girl to the vet for the last time. Her passing was very dignified and peaceful, and I opted to have her cremated. Her ashes will be spread over a farm in Junction City… it just sounded right to me.