The Beginning 4 Pets

We are, or I should now say were, the proud owners of 3 beautiful dogs. Rex is a shorthaired pointer, Lulu a tiny little psychotic dachshund and Luka a live teddy bear of a basset hound.

At first we thought we were going to take the dogs with us. They are, after all, part of our family and Canada doesn’t have any quarantine laws. The dogs need a vet certificate and some rabies shots and on the plane they go, easy. Then the problems started to present themselves one by one. We soon realised that finding a rental house in Guelph that would allow pets is almost impossible. Most of the rentals, of which there are not all that many to begin with, specify no pets. I find this strange as the city is full of trails and parks where you can take your dogs to and every second person on the street is leashed to a canine of some sort or other. The houses there are not fenced in and I had visions of us trudging through the snow in the middle of the night with storm lanterns in hand calling out forlornly through the mist to our missing dogs. The fact that we were going to stay in a hotel for 2 months until our container arrives posed yet another problem. This meant that the dogs would have had to stay here with someone until we have a house on that side and then arrangements would have had to be made with agents to collect them and put them on a plane. We also came to the realisation that dogs running in and out through the doggy door would trudge in snow, mud and all kinds of dirt foreign to SA which would have to be cleaned by....me!!

We then decided that in an effort to keep our already soaring stress levels at below meltdown proportions we would look for loving homes for our 3 four legged children and leave them in SA. To break this news to our two legged children was a story of a different colour. You see, Lulu belongs to Cilliers and Luka belongs to Loest and the bonds of steel are strong.  For days we struggled with the how, where and when to tell them. I was absolutely convinced that they would be emotionally scarred for life and someday would tell their children the sad tale of “do you know what our parents did to us when we were young.” How on earth could we snatch them from everything that is known and comfortable and expect them to leave their pets behind!!

It had to be done though and one evening we sat them down and told them of our decision. After we outlined our reasons in our typical left-brained manner, with bullet points and all, a silence descended and then their right-brained reactions kicked in. Loest burst out in tears yelling Luka, Luka!! Cilliers just sat silently with his head bowed, stood up and walked out the room. In the short silences in between Loest gasping for air you could hear both our hearts shatter.

After days of talking, cajoling, explaining, hugging, drying off tears, talking through it and us sticking to our guns acceptance slowly began to emerge. I dared to think that they would survive it and maybe still think of us as loving parents.

Before I continue with my sad story of love and loss let me first introduce you to our 3 canine family members.

Rex was Kobus’s hunting dog, although they couldn’t hunt as often as both of them would have liked, and he has been a part of our family for 9 years. Pointers have an innate desire to bring you stuff, it is this singular trait that makes them such successful retrievers when working in the veld. When he was a puppy he would drag absolutely everything into the house and proudly present it to us. These gifts included big palm leaves that fell from the trees, sticks, stones and of course the obligatory shoes, which incidentally he never chewed. One day he, very proudly, gently deposited a dead rat on my lap and sat tail waggingly waiting for his profuse praise. It was only with great self-control that I refrained from showing my shrewish side....

Knowing that he was going to be a working dog we could never admonish him for this behaviour, it is after all what he was supposed to do. This trait came in handy at times. When Loest was a baby I would send Rex to go fetch me nappies from Loest’s room whenever I needed one, which he would then very obligingly do. Rex even dragged that big old doughnut cushion all around the house wherever I went so I could put Loest down when I needed to. I tried to teach him to change nappies but this, alas, was not successful. I think Rex, being his regal self, drew the line at that expectation. Rex’s biggest joy would be when the kids were playing in the swimming pool. They would throw in an empty bottle, stick or piece of a pool noodle and Rex would do an Olympic style dive, retrieve the object and bring it to them. This could keep them all busy for hours on end accompanied by the boys’s shrieks of laughter and Rex’s high-pitched yelps signifying his utter and complete ecstacy.

Lulu, the dainty little lady dachshund was Cilliers’ 5^th birthday present. This little lady is a force to be reckoned with and possess the characteristic stubbornness of the dachshund breed in droves. She is at heart a hunter and would not desist from hunting down a lizard on the stoep or trying to get her tiny little teeth into one of the gecko’s that kept our home spider free. She had a high pitched voice that would resonate throughout the neighbourhood whenever we returned home, be it after an absence of 5 minutes or 3 weeks. I’m relatively certain this was not because of overwhelming joy at seeing us again but instead a very loud admonishment to us for leaving her behind.

She is a fun loving little girl and her favourite game is chasing down the little red dot of a laser pointer. She would pester Cilliers with sharp little yelps and jumping up and down until he takes the laser pointer and plays with her. On cold winter nights she likes nothing more than cuddling up under a blanket on Cilliers’ lap and would growl menacingly if he dared to move. Despite being the smallest one in the house she was the undisputed matriarg and the big dogs never dared mess with her. She would very quickly assert her authority that would reduce the other dogs to quivering bags of jello.

In October 2009 Loest, then 4 years old, suddenly came to the realisation that Dad and Cilliers both have dogs and in no uncertain terms informed us that he needs one too. At this point in time we already had 3 dogs (we had another little dachshund which later died, but that’s a story for another day). There was no way that we could say no to this little strong willed boy and plans were set in motion for dog number four. Without actually knowing anything about the breed we decided on a basset hound. In one of Loest’s books was a picture of a brown, white and black puppy basset hound and we told him that he would get such a dog. What we didn’t realise is that bassets are usually only brown and white but if they also have black in their colouring they’re called tricoloured and are double the price of a bicoloured one. We started to look for a puppy and quickly realised that Loest was adamant that the puppy should look exactly like the one in the picture, i.e. a tricoloured one. Every bicoloured basset we saw he rejected as they didn’t match the picture in his book. Eventually we found one that met with Loest’s approval and Luka became family member number 8 at 6 weeks old. Right from the start Loest and Luka were inseparable and we stood amazed at the bond between them. They would play together, sleep together, eat together and very soon the flop-flop sound of Luka’s big feet and floppy ears became part of the symphony of our home. Luka is the naughtiest dog that we have ever owned. Don’t let those big ears fool you, they are only useless skin appendages with no connection to his brain whatsoever. Obedience was not his strong suit and quickly he became known as Luka the destroyer. He figured out how to open my cupboard and helped himself to a smorgasbord of my shoes. One pair he destroyed was a very expensive pair of shoes I received as a birthday present from one of my closest friends, whose love of shoes are legendary. On the particular day in question he opened my cupboard and zoned in on this specific pair. It was winter at the time so all my winter shoes were at the front but Luka bypassed all these wonderful leathery boots and sheepskin slippers and dragged out both of the fancy jewel encrusted heels and proceeded to destroy them with a tenacity not even the best pentathlon athlete possesses. It took me two weeks to gather the courage to tell my friend that her loving effort to drag me into the stylish 21^st century disappeared in a maelstrom of slobber.

Despite his destroyer mentality Luka stole all of our hearts, he is cuddly and loveable and liked nothing more than to snuggle. He would sleep on Loest’s bed, where else, but as soon as he heard our alarm clocks he would run into our room, jump on our bed with boundless exuberance, lie down between us and demanded his early morning dose of love. I would get another basset hound without even having to think twice about it, I’ll just make sure my cupboard can be locked securely.

After our decision to look for adoptive parents for these 3 monsters I utilised the power of SMSe and FB and soon we had reaction.

 Good friends on a hunting farm outside of Kimberley offered to take Rex. He was the first to go and our friends kept us updated with his progress. From the very first night Rex slept on the bed with their 8 year old son, who informed them the next morning that they now have to buy him a double bed as a single bed does not have enough space for the both of them. He has settled in nicely and we know he is with loving and caring people.

Lulu posed a bit of a problem. At first my sister-in-law took her but a week later returned her. She was fighting with their other dogs and their cats and just wouldn’t settle down. Kobus then took her to a farmer near Delmas and there she soon became a little farm dog who followed her new owner all around the farm.

One of Cilliers’ friends from school adopted Luka. They too live on a farm and Luka also settled in quickly. He was of course quickly up to his usual tricks and would help himself to whole loaves of bread from their farm shop and would kidnap all the bacon from the breakfast table.

To entrust our dear furry friends to others was no easy task but at least we know they are well looked after and loved.