Origin Stories – Part Two

This is part two of a “Sunday Story”.  There’s no politics here, just stories about our “pack” of dogs here in Pataskala.

Every heroic Marvel comics character has an “origin story”.  Some are so familiar, they are in inscribed in the national memory.  Superman arrived on earth as a baby, a refugee from the planet Krypton.  Peter Parker was a teenager bit by a radioactive spider.  Batman was the rich kid Bruce Wayne who lost his parents to criminal violence.  

My wife Jenn and I have five dogs.  They are all “rescues”, and while we don’t have all the details, they each have their own “origin story”.  And those tales aren’t just “good stories”; their “origins” often explains their behavior later in life.  

These are their stories (“Chung-Chung” from Law and Order).

Lost Pet Recovery

Last week’s story highlighted our older dogs, Buddy and Atticus.   Both of them were “rescues” from the shelter, Buddy from Licking County and Atticus from Franklin.  About six months after we adopted Atticus, my wife Jennifer became involved in finding lost dogs.  It started locally, with a German Shepard that ran away from nearby Reynoldsburg in a storm.  Jenn was able to track the dog to the very busy intersection of Beecher Road and State Route 16.  She spent days and nights staking out a humane trap, sleeping in the truck in a parking lot and hoping to see and hear the trap door slam shut.

A took more than a week, but Jenn traced the Shepard to his “safe zone”, and he finally went into the well-baited trap.  The next day the Shepard was reunited with his family.  It was during that process that she met Don Corsmeier from Lost Pet Recovery,  the leader of the volunteer group that works all over the Midwest to help owners get their dogs back.  Don is a “master trapper”, and “LPR” helps hundreds of owners each year.

Rescues

There are lots of dogs.  Some are recovered for owners.  Some are rescued from bad situations, without any apparent owners.  For those dogs, LPR does all to find out where they came from.  But sometimes there just isn’t an answer.  Maybe they are strays (like Buddy), maybe they were abandoned, or maybe there was no way to reconnect, like Atticus.  I’m sitting at my desk now, typing this story.  Atticus is in his spot under the desk (Buddy is in his spot in the bathtub).  But on the couch are Louisiana and CeCe, and next to me is Keelie.  Those three were rescued without owners.  Once they came into our house (and into our bed), they had a home, and a pack, here.

Keelie

Keelie was the first.  She was wandering in the grass on the exit ramp between I-75 and another major highway in Northern Kentucky.  Once she was safe, LPR needed some place to “foster” her, while we searched for her owners.  But the search was futile, and Keelie stayed here while they looked.  Meanwhile, she fit into our “pack” from the first minute.  Atticus found a playmate, racing each other around our fenced-in backyard.  And old Buddy was perfectly happy to have a fellow young herding dog in the house.  When the word came back that we were unable to locate an owner, everyone in this house sighed with relief.  Keelie had a new home.

She is the “mother” of the pack.  But she’s not all-accepting.  It takes a bit for Keelie to warm-up to new people.  And, not surprising consider her “origin” story, Keelie is deathly afraid of large trucks.  A walk on the street is great, until the garbage truck comes by.  Then Keelie can’t stop shaking, almost frozen in fear.  She remembers those nights beside the busy Interstate, with the trucks roaring up the exit ramp, right beside her.  

Keelie must have had puppies in her prior life.  She is the caretaker dog to everyone in the house.  When Jenn or I get sick, Keelie is the first dog to try to comfort us.  When one of the other dogs gets “in trouble”, Keelie tries to intervene to keep them “safe”.  If there’s an ear infection, she tries to fix it, a “boo-boo” from rough-housing, and she works to heal it. 

Lou 

And her biggest project was our next rescue, Louisiana.  I’ve told Lou’s origin story in great detail in earlier posts.  The short version:  LPR read about a year old (or so) puppy, left abandoned and broken in the parking lot of Louisiana State University in Baton, Rouge.  He had two broken legs and a dislocated hip, and heartworms as well.  The rescue that had him in Louisiana couldn’t afford to fix him, and he was slated for euthanasia. 

His story struck the LPR crew, and three of them, including Jenn,  jumped in a truck, drove to Baton Rouge, and brought Lou back.  The folks at Ohio State Vet Hospital put him back together, relocating his hip and putting a plate in one leg.  The other leg healed on its own.  And then Lou needed a place and time to recover.  After all of this, it shouldn’t surprise you that Jenn’s office was “the perfect” place.

In the Pack

We had every intention of just “fostering” Lou.  But his rehab went from October to February.  And then another three months were required of heartworm treatment.  By the time all of that was over, Lou was “in the pack”, fast friends with Keelie, competitive ally of Atticus, and always respectful of Buddy.  By summer, his rehabilitation went from short walks around the front yard, to chasing and running with Keelie and Atticus in the back.  

Lou is fixated on the squirrels that share the trees in back.  The squirrels are smart, they sit in the high branches and taunt him, as he shows his full recovery by leaping up at them.  But he can’t catch them, and a ground to air truce persists in our little domain.

Lou is a talker.  When he wants something, he has a nasal whine to let you know.  And when he really is annoyed, he has the “pterodactyl” noise that grabs everyone’s attention.  He’s been through a lot, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that visits to the vet are always traumatic.  All those smells, all those noises, are only reminders of pain for him.  So we have to drug him up before we go, leading to “Stoner Lou”, a flashback to the months of drugs while he recovered from surgery.  

But Lou is also a lover, a snuggler who will walk up, drop his forehead, and place his head in your lap.  He loves the attention, and makes sure he gets his share.  

Four dogs – that was certainly enough – we thought.

CeCe

But then Don rescued CeCe, a young pup, from a rain filled drain pipe over near Dayton.  LPR was unable to locate an owner, and we placed her with a family with lots of young children.  It might have been a perfect fit, but CeCe was just as wild as the three and five year old’s. Reasonably, that was too much, and Jenn and I volunteered to go pick her up and take care of her for a couple of weeks – until another foster was found.

That was May, a year ago.  While LPR searched for a perfect fit, I think they knew that CeCe was already in one.  And while Jenn and I resisted the idea of a fifth dog, “Baby Yoda CeCe puppy” (she looks a lot like the Star Wars character) grew on us, and on the rest of the pack.

Glasses

Keelie found someone to mother.  Lou had a snuggle buddy, and a lower leg chewing tormentor as well.  Atticus had one more playmate, and Buddy, well, CeCe respects his elder status.  CeCe is a puppy.  She loves to chew glasses:  reading glasses, sun glasses, and Jenn and my prescription glasses.  There isn’t an earpiece in the house without some chew marks.  We’ve learned to make sure that all eyewear are safely out of puppy reach.  

But she’s selective.  She gathers loose shoes on her “bed” in the family room, more of a collection than damage.  And when she got my wallet, she left the leather and the credit cards alone.  She carefully extracted all of the cash and chewed it into small pieces.  I got to use the phrase at a concession stand that didn’t take credit cards:  “ But my dog ate my cash!!”

She’s a snuggler as well.  In the middle of the night we often find her pressed up against one of us, sliding under the blanket, looking to stay warm.  And when she needs to go out, we often find out by a careful lick in the ear.  But when there’s thunder, she’s even closer.  In fact they all are:  memories of nights out alone, searching for shelter from the storms.

Five Dog Nights

Five dogs can be a chore.  It’s ten meals a day, twenty paws to clean when it rains, always one who needs to go out in the middle of the night.  Setting up vet visits can be high order scheduling (and financing).  And it’s difficult for Jenn and I to travel.  They “pack” can do a full day at home, some in crates and some not, but that’s about as far as we go.  We did get away last month for a weekend thanks to our son and his girlfriend, but that was our first time in over two years.

But there’s always joy and excitement when we come home.  There’s the surprise “snuggle” in the middle of the day and the happy racing in the backyard on a sunny summer afternoon. And there’s the quiet calm, even in the storm, in our king sized bed when everyone’s found their place.   

And that’s the story of our five dog pack.

The Sunday Story Series

• Riding the Dog  – 1/24/21
• Hiking with Jack – 1/31/21
• A Track Story – 2/7/21
• Ritual – 2/14/21
• Voyageur – 2/19/21
• A Dog Story – 2/25/21
• A Watkins Legend – 3/7/21
• Ghosts at Gettysburg – 3/14/21
• Lessons from the State Meet – 3/28/21
• More Lessons from the State – 4/4/21
• Stories from the Road – 4/11/21
• A Bear Wants You – 5/1/21
• My Teachers – 5/9/21
• Old Friends  – 5/23/21
• The Gift – 6/6/21
• Echoes of Mom – 6/20/21
• Stories of the Fourth – 7/3/21
• Running Memories – 7/25/21
• Lost Dog of Eldora – 8/1/21
• Dogs and Medals – 8/8/21
• The New Guy – 9/5/21
• Stories of 9-11 – 9/12/21
• The Interview – 9/26/21
• Night Moves – 10/3/21
• Funeral for a Friend – 10/11/21
• National Security – 10/24/21
• Boots on the Trail – 10/31/21
• Taking Care of Mom and Dad – 11/14./21
• Dogs Found and Lost – 11/21/21
• Watching Brian 12/12/21
• Stories from Shiloh – 12/19/21
• Team Trips – 12/26/21
• Uphill, Both Ways  – 1/9/22
• Old Trophies – 1/30/22
• The Last Time – 2/7/22
• Olympic Miracles – 2/13/22
• Mind Numbing – 2/20/22
• Track Weather – 4/3/22
• What’s Missing – 4/11/22
• A Scouting Story – 4/17/22
• Waterproof Paper – 5/8/22
• Origin Stories – 5/22/22
• Origin Stories – Part Two 5/29/22