November 5th - A Black and White Gift

I like having pets. When I was a kid, my first pet was a hamster named Hammy (original name, I know.) He was white and light brown, a really nice hamster. I'm sure I was pretty rough with him, as kids can be, but he survived it. Shortly after, I got two more hamsters [they must have been brought home by one of my sisters - I don't think Mom and Dad would have allowed three hamsters]. We named them Smokey (black) and Bandit (white with a brown ring around his middle - a "band" if you will). My sisters obviously didn't appreciate my naming skills and felt the need to step in.

Bandit died pretty quickly of some nasty hamster condition. And then Hammy busted out of his cage to get it on with Smokey. Soon after, there were a bunch of hairless baby hamsters stumbling around in Smokey's cage, which were promptly eaten by their mother. My infatuation with hamsters ended right then and there.

When I was 9 or so, I began obsessing about having a dog. I desperately wanted a dog to love, and "of course, Mom, I will take care of it!" I did research (I was the researching kind even back then) and decided that a beagle was the only dog for me. My parents didn't exactly say yes, but they didn't exactly say no either. I determined that I would be a beagle-owner soon enough.

It was the summer of my sister Bobbi's wedding. July 4th, 1984. The day of fireworks and festivities. The day the dog wandered into our neighborhood.

She had a black coat with a pure white chest. She was the sort of dog you couldn't look at and determine the breed. Black lab? Too short, she wasn't all black, and the head shape was all wrong. No, this dog was pure mutt.

She was extremely thin, with every rib visible. The first time we saw her she in the backyard of the house next door. She drank from their plastic kiddie pool as if she hadn't had water in a month. When she saw us outside, she wandered over to our chainlink fence and eyed us hopefully. My heart was won over.

My sister and I pet her dirty, mangy fur. She had obviously been outside for a long time, and desperately needed a bath. After awhile with the dog, my Dad decided it was time for her to go [he wasn't a big proponent of the "get-a-family-dog" plan]. While I begged and wailed, Dad drove her a few blocks away and dropped her off in a field. And we went away for the day to a 4th of July barbeque.

We arrived home after dark, tired and sunburned from the hot July day. And there on the front porch sat the black dog. In my mind, our dog. At the risk of looking like the most insensitive people in the world, my parents reluctantly put the dog in the backyard for the night and gave her some food and water.

Soon, signs went up and the newspaper advertised the dog we had found. Meanwhile, everyone warmed up to the dog. She was very sweet, not too energetic (read: not wild), and very grateful for her care. We began to suspect abuse, because she had an intense fear of men and would wimper and cower whenever we carried the rolled-up daily newspaper.

There was no response to the advertisements for this black dog we had found. And my parents faced a decision: what to do with this grungy mutt? In the end, the skinny black dog with the white chest had won everyone over, and we kept her.

My sister named her Sparkler in honor of her entrance into our lives on the 4th of July, but we always just called her Sparky. She had worms that required immediate treatment. She needed all of her vaccines. And she had just had a litter of puppies which were never found. She was a shell of a dog, and she needed us.

Sparky lived a long life with our family, even beyond the time that I was married. She went from a fun-loving puppy who easily learned dog tricks to a mellow adult that would enjoy nothing more than laying near your feet while you watched TV. In her twilight years, she became nearly blind and developed crippling arthritis that made her wimper in pain. It was then that my parents knew it was time to let her go, and took her for her last trip to the vetrinarian.

Sparky was a wonderful pet, whom I adored. To stroke her fur and care for her gave me lots of joy. She may not have been the beagle that I dreamed of, but I'm so glad she was my childhood dog.