Finally Home-Lessons on Life from a Free-Spirited Dog (3 page)

We asked if she would like us to wait for the owners and their kids to
come home so that they could officially
say goodbye to him.
Her answer was pretty firm
.

“No
.
Buddy probably would not even recognize them to say goodbye.”
We stared at her for a minute or two in disbelief.
We then caught on and
understood
.
This family was just happy to
let him go
.
We found it a bit disheartening that his own family would not say goodbye,
not
even the kids, and our hearts immediately went out to him. We had said our brief good
-
byes
to the woman
, received some hand-written instructions, a few more veterinary papers…and Buddy.

I do commend them for
their sincere effort in searching
for a home for him and making sure his health was not neglected in the interim.
Some people have been known to dump their unwanted dog in some remote area, left by themselves to fend for food, shelter
,
and protection, or even worse.
At least these owners ensured that his required veterinary visits were followed.

As we ascended the basement stairs en route to the car, Buddy did not seem to have a care that he was leaving.
He hopped the steps two at a time, all the while panting, tugging on the leash, and wagging his fluffy tail. This all
seemed to be a good time to him…or maybe he just knew something that we did not.

We loaded Buddy’s belongings in Michael's car and put Buddy in the back seat of my car.
I had owned many dogs growing up so I was quite used to driving with them
as passengers
.
This was not going to be any different
—
or at least that is what I thought.
I never
seriously
contemplated it until I actually made my first attempt to drive
with Buddy
.

I had
driven
approximately fifteen feet when I was forced to stop my car right there in the middle of the road
without any warning
.
Michael stopped next to me in his car and
looked
at me
,
curious
to fi
nd
out
what in the world would cause me to just stop like that
.

That is, until he noticed the eighty
-
pound dog with his paws wrapped
securely
around my neck from the back.
I simply could not move.
The only choice I
had
was to stop.
I could not even turn the steering wheel.

Buddy was so excited
that
he was jumping back and forth from the back seat into the front seat onto our laps, and he wrapped his two front paws around my neck giving me the biggest bear hug he could muster.
Lesson learned:
Do not ever doubt the strength of golden retrievers.

With that, once we peeled Buddy’s huge paws from my neck, we had to resort to an unplanned, but very necessary Plan B.

Michael
parked
his car
on the side of the road
and
got
into
my
back seat to control Buddy.
This is where we learned that the words “control” and “Buddy” were never to be used in the same sentence again. It
simply would
never work out that way.
These were
only
the first few of many lessons learned by owning an overly rambunctious, highly intelligent
,
eighty
-
pound golden retriever.
I was slowly starting to understand the very reason it was not easy to place this dog in any sane home.
I suppose people that were in their right minds recognized that this
overexcited
dog was insane
.

That was our initial thought
at that point
as well.
Our second thought was, “Hey, let’s just put him back in their yard and take off.
They will notice he is there some
time tonight
,
and they can go back to the tedious job of finding him a home.”

We sat there and stared at each other
,
trying to read each other’s thoughts while dreadfully listening to Buddy’s
exhilarated
panting as he jumped from seat to seat
and
from person to person.
After toying with the idea
of returning Buddy
, we decided against it.
Though
—
make no mistake
—
we still had our doubts.

The ride home was not enjoyable one bit.
Emotions were flying high
:
anxiety, lack of common sense, dread
,
and a severe sense of regret. We lived about twenty to thirty minutes from Bud’s old home.
Typically
on an average day after rush hour, you could jump on the expressway and drive about
fifty-five to sixty
m
iles per hour
. I think I broke every traffic law that night and made it home in
exactly
twelve minutes.

The last thing I remember about that wearisome car ride was that my soon
-
to
-
be husband was literally wearing Buddy as a fur hat.
Buddy
had managed to climb
up and balance himself between the rear window and the
top of Michael’s head so
that the only thing
I
was able to
see in my rearview mirror
was this pup’s enormous body.
I could barely make out Michael underneath all of that golden fur.
The only evidence that
he
was still back there
was the occasional sound of him yelling,
“drive faster!”

The
single
possible chance of making it home alive was
based on giving
Buddy treats, following the destructive pattern that had been the foundation for his bad behavior.
We
fed
him an entire jar of treats in those long twelve minutes.
I truly believe that Buddy was
merely
testing us to see how long it would take
for
us to emotionally break down
as his previous owners had done
.

It was an exhausting night to say the least.
We still had to drive back and get Buddy’s crate.
There was no way we were
going
to let this pup roam free at his leisure
during
his first night.
I
had picked the short straw and
ventured back out into the cold December night to get
Buddy’s
crate while Michael and his niece made their first
courageous
attempt
to train
Bud.

Being a hero to someone, even if it is a dog, is a feeling like no other.
Though it can be frustrating, it
can be the most rewarding thing
to give someone a second chance at a happy life.

On his first night
exploring his new home
, Bud ran through the house at record speed
, showing joy in discovering new sights, new smells, and—unbeknownst to us—new ways to get into trouble.
He was definitely housebroken which was a benefit to us, but at this point, we were convinced
that
this dog never slept or even napped for that matter!

He had a highly excessive amount of energy.
He was f
riendly as c
ould
be, but with what seemed to be trampoline
s
attached to the
soft
pads of his
huge feet, he
delved
into everything.
I ha
d
never experienced a dog jumping and frolicking as much as he did.
He
wanted to investigate every corner of our house
,
and we did not mind that
at all as it was expected
, but he was
beyond
insane
with the amount of liveliness he possessed.
We figured
that he was just overwhelmed, and
after a few more minutes of exploring, he would
grow tired and eventually
calm down.

We figured wrong.
After a few arduous hours of trying to keep up with him, he was not even close to relenting
yet
we had no choice but to go to sleep. Our dialog was no longer making any sense
,
and our eyes were already closing as we robotically walked up the staircase.

We put him in his old, broken-down silver crate with his own torn
-
up blankets and a bunch of his toys
. We then kissed him good-night
and hoped for the best.
Every
time we would go check on him, he was wide awake.
Three days might have
passed before we noticed that he even closed his eyes for more than a blink.

Our hearts went out to him as he must have been so confused. No one had ever taken the time to bond with him and make him feel safe.

During the days that followed, we were forced to make snap decisions regarding the training of this dog. One of the things we decided on was that
we were going to take him off of the “calming” medicine that he
had been given
.
We promptly flushed the remaining three bottles down the toilet.
We were not going to have a healthy, active puppy on downers. There was just no way; we would
much
rather take our chances.

As crazy as he was, he
certainly wasn’t sick. There
was no reason for his personality to be altered by drugs.
The
pills
did not seem to do anything to help calm him down anyway, so what was the point?
We
were determined to
make this work out no matter what
the consequences
.
We were confident that we would figure out ways to calm him down.

It was an exciting adventure and the perfect time to adopt him.
Christmas was literally around the corner, in four days to be exact, and we were looking forward to it.
We were thrilled
to celebrate this new addition to our family.

Underneath the Christmas tree were a wide variety of toys ranging from chew toys to stuffed animals, tennis balls to bones, squeaky toys to Buster Cubes, and everything in between.
He had his own toy chest
filled to the brim
within a few
short
days.

On Christmas
D
ay we locked him in
the bed
room for a few minutes
while we
set each toy (wrapped, of course) in the middle of the
living
room.
You would have thought we had ten
young
children
by the look of it.

When all of the toys were perfectly arranged, we opened the door
,
and Buddy burst out of
the bedroom
like a freight train to
discover
his new treasures. He was so excited and did not know what to do first.
The
expression
on his face
showed
pure elation.