My Life with Dogs, Part 2

My wife and I have owned cats. Cats work for a couple where both have to be at work nine to five. We started with her cat Bailey, an apple-head Siamese. He was calm, not terribly talkative, and only moderately affectionate. He was an outdoor cat. Next to our place for much of the time he was with us was a vacant lot full of brambles and that's where he liked to hide out. He did pretty well, though one psycho neighbor cat (both the neighbor and the cat) ripped him up pretty good one weekend. He recovered. After my Grey Tuxedo bugged out we talked for a bit about another to "keep Bailey company" and decided on an Abyssinian. Annie was much more fun than Bailey and very affectionate and alas, though she appeared to have short hair, was a real shedder. They got along okay and everything was copacetic. Later, after Bailey died, we got another cat, a male Tonkinese we named Timmy. The idea of dog was pretty much out of mind.

Then my wife had a long break from work that she decided to take fishing and reading by a river in Montana. Coincident with that, friends were going to be away traveling and my wife offered to take their rather large puppyish dog with her to Montana. So she ended up having a dog for a couple of months.

Meanwhile at home one Saturday I went to get the paper at the front door and was greeted by the cutest little dog, who went into a sit when I opened the door and just looked at me. Some kind of spaniel. She had no collar and tags, so I let her into the garage and set out some paper and water and just a little bit of dry cat food. I didn't think it would be a good idea to have her in the house with the two cats. Then I called Animal Control. It took them four hours to get to us. Each time I would check on the dog while I waited, she would go into a sit and look at me. She never made a sound.

When Animal Control finally arrived I told them that "If no one wants this dog, I want her." He said that he thought someone would be looking for her. "She's a Cavalier." Turned out she had been micro-chipped so they could find the owner; but for me it was the beginning of an investigation.

Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are a very interesting breed that is in some ways old and some very new. They are the dogs in the paintings of the Restoration period, hence the name for King Charles II. The characteristics seen in the pictures were bred out of the King Charles Spaniels over the years leading to the standard for the English Toy with its pushed in face. In the 1920s a man started looking for "Blenheims of the type" in the pictures from the Restoration, found some rejects from the King Charles Spaniel breeders and began to rebuild the breed. They almost didn't survive WW II in England--people could hardly feed themselves let alone pets--with only six at the end of the war from which all the current Cavalier King Charles Spaniels descend. They weren't recognized by the AKC until 1997, and have now become very popular, which may be unfortunate.

A few years later in the fall of 2003 I was laid off. My wife may have waited a somewhat respectable 24 hours or so before she cheerily said, "Good. Now we can get a dog."

We found Sunny that fall. Regis Olivia Sunlight Rose was the runt of a litter of six that a hobby breeder about an hour south had whelped. My wife had found an ad in the paper. It was pretty much love at first sight. She was a cutie. She wasn't perfect. She had an overbite that required having her baby lower canines pulled and her adult ones ground down, but it actually made her prettier with a slightly longer nose. She's been with us since.

We found a home for Annie the Abyssinian because we knew she would be a bit freaky about the dog, but Timmy stayed. We have some very cute pictures of the 13 week old puppy dancing around Timmy and the cat just staring at her. They have become great buddies and they often end up sharing the same blanket or corner of the couch. Timmy gets pretty bitched off when we take Sunny with us fishing or on vacation, and lets us know very loudly for a couple of days after we come back.

Sunny is very shy and very quiet. She can be not very great on a walk to a strange place, freezing up from time to time, but she loves people and seems to enjoy greeting other dogs of all sizes a lot. Interestingly, she seems to recognize her breed mates and other Cavalier owners have said their dogs do as well.

She's nine now and the life span of Cavaliers tends to be on the short side of nine to fifteen years. They have a propensity for heart problems and no matter how much breeders work to test that out of the lines, most will die from mitral valve disease. Knowing this we had talked about getting another but not too seriously until recently. But now I'm semi-retired and what work I do is from home, it began to make sense. We had a serious Europe trip to get done with first, so when we came back we started looking around for local breeders. One link led us to a fairly hard sell operation that despite its local name turned out to be national and they asserted that we could have "the puppy of our dreams" shipped to us in days. Gave me the creeps. Puppy mills are the most heartless of operations. they don't charge any less than reputable breeders but you have no idea what you are getting.

We found two breeders locally who had just had litters, so we went to visit. Both had very nice looking dogs and were especially interested in seeing if we were the kind of "parents" they were willing to have adopt a puppy. We passed muster at the first but explained to them that we had made another appointment with another breeder and would wait to decide. Turns out they knew the other breeder and were friends.

At the second breeder we were greeted by a literal cavalcade of Cavaliers. She had three generations in the house. Not counting the litter of four puppies there were around a dozen. They wandered around the living room, scrupulously clean by the way, greeting us and occasionally checking out a lap. We met the charming sire of many of the clan, Rodney, and the mom and pups; and then our hostess let in a couple more from outside. One of them, a young male headed straight for me, jumped up in my lap and lay on his back looking up at me dirty paws and all.

Then we find out that he was available, too. At nine months she was still looking for the right home for "KC." I was smitten, of course. KC jumped down and checked my wife out, but then he was right back in my lap after his owner mom had washed his dirty paws. We didn't decide in the moment but asked some questions and then promised to let her know. By the time we had finished the 30 minute drive home we had decided that we wanted him.

"Casey," which is what we will name him, has the kennel name Kid Curry or "KC," but we like spelling it out. We are really curious about how he will fit with Sunny and Timmy. He's quite sweet but clearly has a bit more energy than Sunny. At one point when we were visiting he was rolling around on the floor grappling with his cousin, Dallas. Dallas is being kept for show and has much more of an attitude than Casey, but he was staying right with her, mouth to mouth nipping and rolling, clearly in play. He comes home with us on Monday. Even though Sunny has been with us for nine years, it feels like my life with dogs is just beginning again.