The Best Dog

When it became evident that Bill and I might have a long wait before we could have the baby we longed for, we decided that we should get...a dog! We had been married for five or six years by then, and we were definitely getting used to a rather carefree lifestyle. As we wended our way through fertility treatments and adoption agencies, we felt like we needed to get used to having someone besides ourselves to tend to, so we headed to the local Humane Society to pick out a puppy.

It was the middle of winter, probably not the best time to train a new puppy. But, if we had used reasonable weather as our main criteria, our time frame would have been cut down to four or five months. After all, winter lasts for six months in Traverse City, Michigan, followed by at least a month of mud. So, in spite of the weather, we were ready to adopt our puppy.

At the Humane Society, we were surprised to find a large assortment of dogs, eagerly yapping at us from their cages. One cage was unique, though. It contained a litter of nine--NINE--furry, white bundles of energy. Someone had told us, long ago, that it was best to pick the liveliest puppy from a litter, so we could be sure that the puppy was healthy. It wasn't an easy decision, since the puppies all looked alike, but we finally settled on just the right one.

Bill, with our puppy

For the next six months or so, our puppy was known by the original name of "Puppy." We agonized over his real, permanent name. We had been told that his mother was a pure-bred American Eskimo, which is a medium-sized breed of sled dog similar to a Samoyed, and his father was probably an overzealous neighborhood Collie or Golden Retriever. Our puppy loved the snow, as all sled dogs do, so we decided that we wanted to give him a nice Alaskan name. In those days before the Internet, I had no options except to peruse the encyclopedias in the school library, and then at our local public library, but I couldn't find just the right name. Somehow, names like Nome or Juneau or Klondike just didn't seem right. We spent more time deciding our puppy's name than picking our first baby, Erin's, name, when she finally arrived a couple of years later. But after several months, for no good reason at all, we finally chose "Ramsey" as his name. He seemed happy to give up the title of "Puppy," and soon answered easily to his real name, in spite of our delay in making a choice.

Ramsey followed Bill through the snow to get the mail

Ramsey proved to be easy to train. As he grew out of the puppy stage, people laughed when we told them that Ramsey was the liveliest puppy in his litter, because he was always a calm, easy-going dog. He loved to play in the snow and go for walks, as most dogs do, but he also loved his naps. Because of his serene temperament, we soon came to the conclusion that his father must have been that wayward Golden Retriever.

It wasn't long before I learned that Ramsey was a wonderful skiing companion. After teaching kindergarten all morning, I would often come home from school, put on my cross country skis, and ski out the back door to Silver Lake, the lake right behind our house. Ramsey always stayed close to me, running a little ways ahead, then circling back to check on me before surging ahead again to explore the snowy underbrush. 

A few years later, we learned that Ramsey was an excellent kids' dog. He let our girls crawl all over him when they were learning to get around. He never minded being their pillow. Meagan was only four or five when we let her take him for a walk, by herself, around the block. Ramsey always plodded steadfastly beside her. He was fiercely loyal and always protective of our kids, so we could be confident that he would not let any stranger get close to her.  

                                

  With Erin and me: Always vigilant                                Meagan walking Ramsey

Ramsey had his faults, as all dogs do. He loved to eat crayons and unattended peanut butter sandwiches. He loved to eat, period. Once, when Bill's Granny Lucas came over to help us make noodles, Ramsey helped himself to some of the noodles that were spread out on the bed to dry. And I still remember the time, in Michigan, when he got into our neighbor's pigpen, in search of the leftover Chef Pierre factory pie dough they fed their pigs. Now I know where that expression, "sick as a dog," comes from. Ramsey's breath smelled yeasty for days!

We found clumps of Ramsey's lush fur all over the house. We couldn't afford a professional groomer, so Bill bathed him in the bathtub once in a while, until the girls were old enough to take over that job, and I took him outside every so often to brush out his fur and trim the mats that always formed behind his ears and under his belly. In spite of all that, our vacuum still got a good workout.

Ramsey was rarely sick. Until the last month of his life, we visited the vet only for regular Rabies shots. He was fifteen years old when he stopped eating. We bought some special food from the vet's office, but he wasn't able to eat much of that, either, before he apparently suffered a stroke. When we woke up one sunny, winter morning to find that he couldn't walk, we knew that the end had come. Bill was working out of town, so Bill's dad took Ramsey to the vet's office that one last time.

We've had two more dogs, since Ramsey. Kirby and Jackson have both been faithful companions, but they can never compare to Ramsey. God knew just what we needed as we waited for our babies to arrive, and even after Erin and Meagan joined our family. Ramsey truly was the best dog ever.