Where would I be without my dogs? I’ve thought a lot about this – ever since I lost my first dog. I got my first dog when I was 20 years old. I had just moved out of my parent’s house and what better way to express my newly found freedom than doing something my father explicitly forbid? Oh, yes…I got a dog – a 10 week old female Dalmatian puppy. I named her Gigger and she turned out to be my best friend, constant companion and counselor all rolled in one. She brought me joy, amusement and companionship every day we were together. She was skilled at consoling me when I was down and I always relaxed when I watched her carefree, goofy antics. All I had to do was look in her eyes and I felt at home. She was always with me – she even moved with me to Indiana and New York when I was in undergrad and graduate school. She wasn’t a family dog – she was my dog and we were fortunate enough to have many years together.

When your dog gets older it is so hard to watch its decline. My once active, energetic chipmunk-chasing, mole-killing dog started to move slowly and had a hard time getting up from a lying position. Do they understand what is happening to them? Do they know what it means to age? Dog owners are always putting human thoughts and emotions on their pets. I suppose I am no different. Can a dog make comparisons? Do they understand that what they once were able to do they can no longer do?

Just the idea of losing a beloved dog is something dog owners obsess about and dread – in some cases – years before they lose their pup. When the dog starts to slow down or receives an unfortunate diagnosis from the Vet, the fear of losing their dog becomes a reality. For some of us, it is just too hard to consider how we will go on without the dog’s constant source of love, acceptance and companionship – that’s how much our dogs mean to us.

Gig was 14 ½ years old when she was euthanized. She was suffering from kidney failure and her quality of life just wasn’t there. I have never felt the intense heartache as I did when she was euthanized. I had lost a grandparent, aunts and uncles – but the grief I felt over the loss of Gig couldn’t be compared – it was so much more intense. I was inconsolable and felt as if I was cut adrift from what was right and familiar. Green was no longer green – it was red. A square was no longer a square, but a circle. The world had somehow shifted – everything looked strange through my eyes without Gig by my side.

I was dogless for 7 days before I adopted a Golden Retriever rescue named Hailey. She was almost 4 years old and came with an uncertain history – two contradicting stories of why she no longer had a home. I didn’t care. I just couldn’t live without a dog. At first it was simply having another dog around me. On the day that Gig was euthanized I even ‘borrowed’ my sister’s dog, Zoe, because simply having a dog near me made me feel better. But after a bit of time, I started to see all the special qualities of Hailey Dailey as well.

I had a tough time getting over the loss of Gig – even with Hailey by my side. It certainly lessened the heartache – well, maybe not lessened the heartache of losing Gig, but it gave me a new joy having adopted Hailey. I know some people feel like they are betraying their deceased dog by getting another dog so quickly. I never had that problem. It didn’t take me very long after adopting Hailey to understand that Gig wasn’t the only dog that I could bond with – all dogs are unique and precious in their own way. And the connection dogs and people have – the bond – is what makes the dogs so dear and so important to us.

There were quite a few people that professed that they could not understand why I was grieving over the demise of a dog. It was not like my Dad died or something, right? Sure, they were okay with a few tears right after the fact, but days or a couple weeks later I was still upset about it? They just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me.

I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with me too. Why was this so hard? Sure I loved my dog and missed her but why was the grief so intense? My grandmother died when I was 14 years old. I grew up with and was partly raised by my maternal grandmother – she lived with us. I never remember a time when my Gram was not around. I grieved her death, but it wasn’t as intense as the death of my dog.

How was it possible that the death of Gig hit me harder than the death of my grandmother? I loved my Gram – she was very much on the antisocial side, tough to get to know and at times really rather grouchy. But she could also be nurturing, comforting and chatty as well. I never really knew which version of her I would encounter on any given day. She was difficult to deal with because of this uncertainty, but that did not mean that I did not love her. So – perhaps I just loved my dog more? Is the love that you feel for your pup even the same love that you feel for another human?

We outwardly profess our love for our dogs in all sorts of ways. Driving down I-94 yesterday morning I saw numerous bumper stickers from love-struck dog owners: a paw print in which the center had written ‘I Love My Dogs’ and another stated, ‘Who rescued Who?’, ‘Golden Retriever Mom and Dad on board’ and ‘I Love My Shih Tzu’. The pet industry is over a $60 billion industry in the US – not too shabby for all the Mollies, Baileys and Coopers out there. My personal favorite confession of dog-love is a t-shirt I saw once printed with the caption, ‘How To Handle Stress like A Dog: If you can’t eat it or play with it…then pee on it and walk away’.

I don’t see dogs as furry ‘little’ people. I do not dress my dogs in clothes – nor do I wish I knew what my dog was thinking. Dogs are dogs. But I also have a hard time thinking about love in terms of degrees. It is hard for me to grasp that I loved my dog more than I loved my Gram. Love is love – it either is there or it isn’t there. Nor do I see the love of a dog as a different kind of love than the love we have for our friends or family. Love is love is love.

Relationships with people can be so much more complicated and quite often – messy. With a dog what you see if what you get. There are no words to misconstrue, no lines to read between, as there are with people. No jealousy, judgment, hate or greed to deal with – the ‘lower’ aspects of humanity do not exist with dogs. I have never had a dog that held a grudge for years like some people I know. What you see is what you get with a dog.

I finally came to the conclusion that I simply valued the bond I had with Gig more than the bond I had with my grandmother. But I was still intrigued with the question of why. I don’t know about your dog, but all of my dogs are capable of the most disgusting things – eating dead and decomposing animals or rolling in wild animal’s excrement. None of which I have ever seen a human friend of mine do. Can you imagine having a friend over and watching him eat the dead bug on the driveway or roll in possum poo in your yard? You’d think twice about inviting that friend back. Yet we welcome and share our homes and in some case our beds with our dogs.

Our dogs aren’t particularly useful either, or at least my dogs have never been very helpful. If you have an accident your dog certainly isn’t going to drive you to the ER, nor will your dog make and have dinner waiting for you when you get home from a hard day at work. Jasper, one of our Golden Retrievers, does an awesome job of stealing pillows and leaving them all over the house. I don’t find that particularly useful – every night having to find my pillow before I go to sleep. Schatz does a great job of keeping the squirrels and chipmunks off the front patio, but I can’t say that I find much use to that – although Schatzi most definitely carries on like she is performing a life-saving service. Gig did an awesome job killing moles, but the holes she created when she dug them up sort of cancelled out the helpfulness of killing the mole.

Dogs and humans have been in companionship for around 10,000 years – which is when dogs started appearing in human artwork and in our burial grounds – some ancient dog burials also included grave goods to help the dog on it’s journey to the afterlife. Dogs have been valued and loved by humans for a very long time.

I’ve read numerous articles that state the varying health benefits of dog ownership or even articles that proclaim that when we gaze into our dog’s eyes our bodies release the hormone oxytocin – a chemical that is also released when a mother gazes into her infant’s eyes. I don’t doubt anything that these articles claim. But at the same time I have a hard time thinking about the love for my dog in terms of scientific explanations – it’s just too disconnected for me.

I have a hunch the reason why my dogs have meant so much to me is much more intuitive. Dogs and humans might be two different species but one thing we have in common is we both have a deep-rooted, intrinsic need for connection – to be loved and to love and this is what matters most in life. I value what my dogs show me, by example, each and every day: simple things matter most, spending time with the people that you care about and accepting the world as it is and loving it freely.

Dogs always see the world with ‘fresh eyes’. Jasper can find 50 holes to put his head down at the park and each and every one is just as exciting and new as the first. Life is always exhilarating and fresh for a dog. Dogs live for the moment – not worrying about the future or regretting what they said to the poodle down the street the evening before – they take life as it is. A dog’s trust for his human is unparalleled in the world of human interaction. We humans have to earn another’s trust with time and diligence – a dog’s trust has to be lost over time, as dogs are so forgiving for human slights. The world would definitely be a kinder, friendlier and less judgmental place if humans were more like their dogs.

It is such a human thing to want to know ‘why’. I doubt that any of my dogs ever wonder why they loved me. Score another point for dogs and their mindset of living in the moment. But maybe – just maybe – I am to the point in which it just doesn’t matter so much. Perhaps I need to be more dog-like in this regard and just accept what it is in front of me and let the ‘why’ roll off my back. Whether it matters or not – I do know this – I simply cannot imagine my world without a dog or two or three in it.

 

 

 

How many of you dream of finding a treasure? I mean something of real value – something you will truly cherish? Well, this is the story of how the humans at Tailwagger Dog Photography found a treasure – a treasure of immense value – an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind treasure. One year ago we adopted a 5-year-old English Springer Spaniel named Shots. We immediately changed her name to the German word Schatz, which means treasure. Both names sound the same, so there wasn’t an adjustment for little Schatz. We tend to call her little Schatz simply because she is the smallest of our three dogs – by a good 25 pounds. What little Schatz is missing in stature, she sure makes up for in personality.

Schatz is an intense, affectionate and people-oriented pup that is 98.5% nose. Little Schatzi was bred, born and trained to be a nose. She is a former explosives detection dog that worked for three years in Afghanistan before being retired after tearing her right ACL. Part of the reason we named her Schatz is because she was born and trained in Germany using German commands.

When Schatzi first came to our home she hung out alone in her crate (with the door open) holding onto her black Kong, chewed on nylabones incessantly and continually watched our two Golden Retrievers play, but never joined in. She never really took naps – she was too busy watching what was going on. The first several walks we took her on she shook the entire time and cowered whenever there was a loud or strange noise. If she saw another dog or a squirrel she would scream at it – this high-pitched half yip/half howl – continuously until she could no longer see it. To say the little girl had a bit of anxiety is an understatement.

The first few weeks we had Schatz she just seemed to be observing how things worked in our house – our daily rituals, as well as continually checking out Boo and Jasper, our Goldens. She seemed surprised that her collar was taken off every night and put back on the next morning – seemed intrigued, but uncertain by the idea of eating sliced bananas, cucumbers and apples for snacks – as well as outright perplexed and very curious about Jasper and Boo growling at each other, jumping on each other and biting at the other’s ears and legs while they were playing.

It took a little while but Schatz slowly came out of her shell – a big thanks to Jasper. Jasper seemed outright frustrated and almost irritated that Schatz would not play with him. Jasper’s goal in life is to have fun – it is the #2 goal on the Golden Retriever’s comprehensive list of Life Ambitions (food is locked in at #1 and always will be). He would take toys and put them in her face and make growling noises and get in the downward dog/let’s play position and bark at her. She would just impassively stare back.

One day Jasper stole Schatz’s black Kong. Schatz came to our home with her black Kong – it was her ‘security blanket’ and she was rarely without it. Not only did Jasper grab Schatz’s black Kong – but he ran away with it! The result was Schatz’s first chase of an on-going game of chase/keep-away that has been played pretty much every day since then.

From that day on Schatz watched Jasper constantly and started to mimic him – to the point of stealing our socks and boots, begging for food and counter-surfing (although she is a little short to be an effective counter-surfer). She even started to take naps with Jasper.

One thing that always struck us about Schatz is how different she is inside the house vs. outdoors – she can be such a paradox in this way. The indoor Schatz is cuddly and always waiting for one of us to sit down so she can sit on our lap. She dances and twirls around and around in anticipation of a frozen peanut butter Kong and will lie down in the middle of the room on her back and patiently wait for someone to walk by and give her a belly rub. The indoor Schatz will always make eye contact with her humans.

Then there is outdoor Schatz – also known as The Nose. Her humans don’t exist on walks – they are just the weight on the other end of the leash that keeps her from following her nose full tilt. She won’t look at us, if we call her name. She won’t sit, if we tell her to. She has even picked up a scent and crashed right into one of us following it – as if she wasn’t even aware that we were there. If we kneel down in front of her she turns around and looks the other way, or she stretches her neck to look around us – all the while never making eye contact. And the entire time she is sniffing – sniffing the ground, the air – obsessive sniffing – such intense sniffing that her teeth make clicking sounds.

It’s no secret that Schatzi can be a little intense. Whatever the little girl does she gives it her all and then some. For example, she wags her tail so hard that her butt wiggles – hence her nickname Wigglebutt. Even though we have had Schatz for a year, we are still trying to teach her how to walk. No, there is nothing physically wrong with her…she just runs everywhere. She can be standing 5 feet away when she is called and she will run the few feet over. She even cuddles intensely. Schatz won’t just snuggle up to a leg or lie at one’s feet. She has to climb on, or lie on top of you and press herself against you – her version of a hug, with her nose a half an inch away from your nose.

It has been an interesting and gratifying year since we found our little treasure – watching her adjust to life in our family and home, as well as watching her slowly transform into a dog that can now relax and just be a dog. Her anxiety has lessened immensely: she will now nap on and off all day long (as dogs do), she enjoys playing with Jasper and Boo – even to the point of seeking them out for a little playtime and she no longer has to constantly hold a Kong or toy in her mouth or chew on nylabones.

Sure…we still have our trials from time to time. Her intensity (especially if there is a squirrel involved) can still be a bit overwhelming. We recently sought the help of a friend, Liz Drennan, from Kibby Park Animal Hospital who gave us some much appreciated and needed advice concerning walking Schatz. Liz reminded us that Schatz was trained to do a job. She no longer has that job, but she still has the nose to do the job and she still has the need to do a ‘job’ while she is outside. Schatz needs to sniff – it is who she is. When she goes for a walk, the walk, in part, needs to be about sniffing. We were so fixated on the idea that Schatz needed to walk ‘correctly’ that we forgot who Schatzi is – what she was trained to do – sniff. Schatz is much more than a nose – true. But when the little girl is outside – she is pretty much all nose. So, now when we go for walks, we always pick areas for her to just let loose with her nose. As a result, the walks are much more enjoyable for both the Nose and us.

We are ever so grateful to have found our little treasure and even more grateful that she has been able to make the progress that she has over the past year. But like most stories there is usually a story before the story. Our story of Schatz would not be complete without mentioning a woman named Sharon. Schatz’s success story could have never taken place if it hadn’t been for Sharon. Sharon took care of Schatz for the nine months before we adopted her. When Sharon first met Schatz, Schatz did not want to leave the security of her crate. Sharon took an anxiety riddled, cowering and frightened pup and showed her – with a ton of patience, love and a huge amount of TLC – that the world wasn’t such a bad place after all. So, Sharon, we would like to express our gratitude to you as well for doing such a great job with Schatzi and for trusting us to take her on the rest of her journey.

So, this was our story of how we found a treasure. We know there are lots of ‘treasure’ stories out there to be told and each and every one of them is just as special as the pup they are about. Thanks for letting us share our story with you!

Hi everyone! This is our first blog post on our new website! Today is also an anniversary of sorts for us at Tailwagger Dog Photography as well. May 25, 2017 – it has been exactly one year since we met our little Schatz! We met Schatz when we were photographing a friend’s dogs – one of them was Schatz, a five-year-old English Springer Spaniel. We learned from our friend that Schatz was a bit too much for her and that she was looking for a good home to place her in.

Our first impression of Schatz was that of a crazy, ball/kong chasing blur of liver and white fur – the little girl held nothing back while she was chasing her toy – only to come screaming back and drop it at our feet and dance and twirl around impatiently waiting for us to throw the toy again. She went on and on – with seemingly endless energy. Occasionally she cooled off by taking a dip in her tub that was filled with cool water, as it was a fairly warm day for May. But only for a minute or two and she was at it again!

This is one of the images we took that day. Looking at this image today makes everything come alive again: Schatz’s immense energy, her constant and intense tail wagging (that eventually earned her the nickname of Wigglebutt) and how our attention, pets and playing with her turned into her affection for us. Oh, little Schatzi, how lucky we all are that we met a year ago today – Happy Anniversary, little Wigglebutt!

There is so much more to tell about our Schatzi, she is such a special pup, but it will have to wait till the next post. If you are interested in never missing a blog post, just subscribe to the Taillwagger Blog and it will be delivered to you inbox whenever we post a new entry.