A BLOG ABOUT DOGS

       

Molly and I on the patio

Dogs are popular in a lot of mysteries. I’m not sure if there are as many dogs as there are cats. though.

Probably if not, it's because dogs need more care than a cat so a detective, real or amateur, can’t take off to investigate as easily. Pets tend to humanize a character. True or not, we think the character with a dog or cat as being a nice person. This is especially true if the reader is a cat or dog owner. I’ve written about cats in cozies before so now I’m writing about dogs.

In the United States 36.5% of households have dogs; a total of 69,926,000 dogs in all. The average household with canines has l.6 dogs which seems strange. I’ve never had a .6 dog. Nor, come to think of it have I ever seen a .5 kid although some statistics say most families have 1.5 children. Is a .6 dog or a .5 child smaller than the average dog or child? And then I wonder how they get these statistics. Recently I read of a hoarder in California, who had 140 dogs. Since there are dog owners who neither pay for dog tags nor take their dogs to a vet, how do they come up with those statistics?

Maggie on a morning walk in the woods with me.

Anyway, I like dogs, but collies are my favorite. It could be because my mother used to talk about Fuzzy, the farm collie she grew up with. But more likely it’s because after I’d read all the horse books in our small school library numerous times, I turned to dog books and discovered Albert Payson Terhune. In reading his books, I absolutely fell in love with collies like Bruce, Lad and others he wrote about living at Sunnydale, his home in New Jersey. I got my first collie when I was sixteen. Dusty was a collie mix and showed up as a stray. When I got married and couldn’t take her with me, my parents gave her to a farmer. I grieved over that.

Molly with her kitten, Fred Astaire

Through the years I had other collies and two German shepherds almost all who came either as strays or I’d found in a classified ad. Since we lived in a rural area, all our dogs were outside dogs.  Shortly after I moved to the small farm I have now, the dog I had then, a German shepherd my son brought home as a puppy years before, had to be put down when his hip totally gave out. Since I was living on my own now and teaching, I didn’t have another dog for fifteen years. It wouldn’t be fair to have a dog when I was gone so much. Then I saw an ad  for collie pups and on an impulse went to see them and picked out a tiny six week old sable and white puppy. I named her Molly and fell completely in love with her. She was the first house dog I’d ever had. Everyone loved this little fluffy ball of fur, and because of all the attention, she became the friendliest dog I’ve ever known. Everyone she met was her new very best friend and she especially loved children. She got along with all animals; the dogs we met when walking the Greenway Trail, my ponies, cats and she’d herd my chickens back into their coop when I let them out to free range which frustrated them.  She even lovingly bathed a batch of tiny wild rabbits she’d unearthed from under a rosebush in my rose garden.

And then just short of her fifth birthday, she developed grand mal seizures. With medication the vet provided her seizures were controlled for a few weeks and then she had a massive seizure leaving her hind quarters paralyzed. I had no choice but to have her put to sleep. Holding her and singing to her as she licked the tears from my face while she was being injected was extremely sad, but at least I was with her. She quietly died in my arms. I brought her home and buried her in a flower garden near my house.

Maggie hoping for a treat  before we start out.

My youngest daughter wanted me to get another collie right away, but I wasn’t ready. Still, she went on-line and searched out collie breeders in my area. Collies are not as popular as they once were and not easy to find. I went on-line and checked out collie rescue sites, but all the collies available were senior collies or those with medical problems. Having just gone through the trauma of losing one beloved collie, I didn’t want one I’d be saying good-by to in a few years.

Eventually, my daughter located two breeders reasonably close. Neither had any puppies or dogs available, but both said they’d have puppies in the fall which was fine with me. I wasn’t ready to replace Molly. When September came, one breeder called and said none of her girls took so there wouldn’t be any puppies. However, she had an eighteen-month tri-colored female, who didn’t show well so she’d sell her to me at a reasonable price. I went to see her and fell in love with her. She had a lot of champions in her blood-line which meant absolutely nothing to me. I had no interest in raising or showing dogs. The breeder had got her from Minnesota because of her pedigree. Her registered name is Twin Cities Born to Dance. Can you see me calling her by that name? She pointed out a few things that kept her from doing well in a show ring, but when I got to know Maggie, as I named her, I decided the real reason was that unlike Molly, she was a shy dog and new situations made her nervous. I couldn’t see her showing well with crowds of strange people and dogs. Even now, until I’m friendly with new people, she stands back and watches and won’t come near them.

Maggie seen through my veggie garden gate.

A few days later, the previous owner called to see how she was doing. I told her, “She’s doing very well, but she never barks.” The woman said, “Oh, that’s because she’s muted. I have all my dogs muted.” My daughter, who paid for half of her cost, was angry and wanted me to take her back which I had no intention of doing. “Mary,” I said, “you paid for half and your half of Maggie is the back half. My half is the front and I don’t care if it barks.” Actually, she does bark and can be quite vocal, but it’s not a loud shrill bark.

Maggie may not be a rescue dog in the way most people think of a rescue dog, but to me she is. She was rescued from being kept in a kennel and turned into a breeding machine. She has become a house dog, she learned she can jump up on logs in the woods on our walks and she is free to explore while we’re walking. She can chase squirrels and helps me with barn chores by barking at the ponies and telling them it’s time to come in. And best of all, she doesn’t have to share her person with multiple other dogs in small increments of time.

Maggie and I in my library.

A few days ago, Maggie brought me a present. She dropped the rolled up parcel at my feet and gave me her happy collie grin waiting for a reward for her gift. It was my great-grandson’s dirty diaper. My daughter-in-law had been babysitting with him the day before. So in my mystery mind always looking for plots, a dog bringing a clue pertaining to some crime is good. It’s not only been done in mysteries, but happens in real life. Not too long ago a dog in the next county started bringing home bones. At first the owner thought it was from a deer. He lives near a wooded area. It turned out they were human bones from a homicide.

If you’re a writer, do you include pets in your mysteries?

Do you like to read mysteries with pets in them or doesn’t it matter?