I'm a D.O.G begins with Satchel because he is the 1st dog shared by me and Jason. We were both raised with dogs and had our hearts filled by those pets. We are now lucky enough to love Satchel.
We have Satchel's original paperwork from the Humane Society. He was a puppy born there in 1994 and adopted by a nice man. The nice man died in 1997 and his extended family didn't know what to do with his house nor with his Yellow Lab/Golden Retriever. The sweet dog was left in the basement and let out once per day for 5 months. A nice woman named Louise learned of this dog's sad situation and agreed to foster him until she could find him a home.
Enter Jason. Jason came home in the winter of 1998 to tell me he'd met thee best dog. "Pal! This dog is awesome. He's the friendliest, nicest dog you've ever seen." I was interested in hearing about him. We were living in an apartment, building a house that would not be ready until March. We knew we wanted a dog, but we couldn't adopt a dog today. But we had a feeling. I asked, "What's his name." Jason said, "Satchel." I said, "We have to have him."
I have always loved the baseball pitcher Satchel Paige. Our dog, that's what I was calling him already, had to be named after Satchel Paige, right? We had to have him.
It took a little bit to convince Louise that we were committed to Satchel and we had to arrange a temporary home for him that would be close so I could walk him every day.
Enter Jason's mom and dad. They agreed to let Satchel live with them until our house was completed! Satchel came to live with them on Valentine's Day 1998. We moved into our house in late March and Satchel was our most important package.
We've learned so much about how to meet dogs' needs through Satchel. He came to us with many anxiety problems and by consulting dog behaviorists, reading books and by reading Satchel, he became The Perfect Dog. He's quirky and fun. He knows hand commands for all the basic obedience 'tricks' and loves to lay on both hot asphalt and frozen snow. His hearing ability has probably lessened as he's aged, which we think has helped with his fireworks and thunderstorm fears. We've learned that his pure insanity in a moving car is due to severe car sickness, which is helped when he lies on the floor between the front and back seats.
He's survived soft tissue sarcoma (surgery and 18 radiation treatments) and laryngeal paralysis (tie-back surgery). He's the strongest person we know and we can't imagine a happy life without him. He turned 14 on July 29, 2008.
We, as a family, started with Satchel. Satchel is AWESOME. He is our Satchimus, our Satchamo, our Satchie-tuna, our Satch Man, our Big Guy. He is our dog. He is our love. He's Our Satchel and he makes us a Pack!
1 comment:
I loved all the stories about all the animals in your pack! I had heard at least partial versions of the Satchel and Luna stories (I wonder if you remember I came over on the day you got Luna?), but this was the first I had heard of Koko's history. No wonder you love her so! I want to share my pack stories too. I live with one human (Steve), two dogs and a cat. My German Shorthaired Pointer, Sammi, has the most interesting story. One blustery January day about 10 years ago, I was driving my new car down busy Airport Road on my lunch hour when I noticed two puppies racing pell mell toward the highway. Quickly I braked and pulled to the shoulder, jumped out and scooped up one of the puppies and tossed it, sodden and excited, onto my virgin new car upholstery. As I knocked on doors of nearby houses, I scanned the road for the second puppy and eventually found her and tossed her in too. Unable to locate the owner, I drove home and put the two puppies into a large crate and went back to work. Later my three children, ages 11, 14 and 16, came home from school. My eleven-year-old, Katie, fed and played with the puppies until I came home. She named the one feisty female "Pearl." Meanwhile, I had posted a sign on the road that read, "Found: 2 Puppies" and my phone number. Before I even arrived home the call came in. Later the owner, who had bred the 10-week-old puppies, came by and gratefully retrieved them. He was keeping one of the pups and the other was sold and the new owner was coming that evening to pick her up. As a token of his thanks, he offered me one of the valuable purebred puppies, a male, that he had not been able to sell. My husband had also placed a limit on the number of animals--and we already had a dog and two cats--so I politely refused. However, Katie was in the room when the offer was made. After the man left, she asked me why we couldn't have the puppy. I said it was okay with me if she could talk her dad into it. Well, it took her about 10 minutes, but she did. The next day we drove back to the man's house and to our delight, the buyer had changed his mind and taken the male, and we got the feisty female that Katie had named "Pearl." A sad addendum to the story is that a few weeks later, our beloved older dog, a 10-year-old lab mix that we had adopted from the Leader Dog reject program, was diagnosed with lung cancer, and she passed away shortly afterward. I can't help feeling that God placed those two puppies in my path that day so that our grief would be tempered by the joy of a bouncing bundle of joy. Like you, we decided the newborn needed a new name, but our committee of five trying to name a puppy was in danger of starting the third World War. Finally we settled on "Samantha" or "Sammi" for short. Since her birthday was on Halloween, we named her after the main character in my favorite childhood TV show, Bewitched. Eventually she became our "Samantha Pearl."
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