Every few months, both my husband and I look at the web-sites that feature puppies and dogs for adoption. There have also been puppies being offered for sale right here in town, either at the Walmart shopping center or in the old downtown area. We came so very close last year to adopting a tiny puppy... so close that we even gave the puppy a name--- Winnie The Poohdle.
Close, but no cigar. And no puppy, either. Every time we get that close, my husband is usually the one who calls a halt to the procedure. "Do we really want another dog?" he will ask me. (Regarding Winnie the Poohdle, my answer was yes.) "Are we really ready to commit another 15 years to taking care of a dog?" (That's about the time when I give him the look that says "Just which part of 'we' do you think will be taking care of the dog?")
At the end of the debates and discussions, the answer to the dilemma is always the same. "We had a dog. We had the best dog. We had Gracie." And that about ends the discussion for my husband.
We adopted Gracie in October of 1996, shortly after buying our house in Clear Lake. We were barely settled for a month in that house when my husband wanted to 'take a look' at the local SPCA. The look-see found us face-to-face with this little black and white puppy who followed my husband all around the grounds of the SPCA. She sat down when he stopped walking and looked up at him with bright eyes and an honest-to-goodness smile on her little puppy face. As soon as my husband started walking again, that puppy was at his heels, following his every step.
They told us that she was part Border Collie, part Black Lab. The puppy's face turned side to side, from the SPCA worker to my husband, as we all chatted about the puppy. They didn't think she'd get very big... no more than 50 pounds was their best guess. My husband thought 50 pounds was a small dog. I disagreed... my idea of a small dog was less than 15 pounds, like the fluffy lap-dogs that I'd had years ago. "Fifty pounds is nothing," said my husband. In my mind, 50 pounds was a lot of dog, but how could I argue with that puppy-face who wouldn't take her eyes off of my husband.
The Border Collie/Black Lab puppy came home with us that day. We stopped at a local pet shop to buy bowls and a bed, a blanket and a leash, and a training crate. The crate had to be large enough to hold the puppy at her adult weight, so it was a good size. Not the smallest crate in the store, but not the largest, either. The puppy sat on my lap during the drive home, but she never took her eyes away from my husband. They had bonded in the SPCA yard, as if they'd been together forever.
Puppy needed a name. We tried names based on her coloring, which didn't seem to work (too common). Then we tried the usual dog-type names, which again, seemed too common. My husband suggested a people-name, and we tried a few of those, which didn't seem to fit her. At the time, I was reading a book by George Burns, titled "Gracie," a book about the love and marriage of George Burns and his wife Gracie Allen. It was a beautifully written book.
I suggested the name "Gracie." My husband liked the name, and the puppy seemed to like the name as well because she smiled up at my husband and sat by his feet when he said the name to her. So Gracie it was. The name was cute, the name fit somehow, and over the years, we would also call her Princess Grace, and Gracie Boo-Boo....... but officially, her name was Gracie.
I quickly realized just how energetic a puppy can be when it has the genes of a Border Collie and a Black Lab. There were many days when my husband came home from work and I told him "This dog has got to go back! I can't control her, and you're gone more than you're home and I'm stuck with this crazy puppy!"
As always, in questionable situations, my husband checked the Internet. He looked under dog trainers and found a local young man just setting up a puppy and dog training business. We signed Gracie up for obedience classes. At first, both my husband and I took Gracie to the lessons. Then my husband's job got in the way of the classes, so it was just me and Gracie with the dog-trainer, and then me showing my husband what 'we' had learned.
The obedience classes were the best idea.... Gracie became the best-trained dog in the neighborhood. She could be stubborn at times, especially if we had to do those lessons after it had just rained. (Princess Grace did not like walking through puddles.) As Gracie grew up through her puppy-hood, and entered into her own little dog-world, she was indeed an obedient and well-trained dog. My husband always walked her without a leash, and just one word from him (as in "Gracie!") would have her immediately at his side and looking up at him with love and loyalty.
The dog-training classes were instrumental in teaching Gracie not to chase our cats. We asked the trainer to come to our house for those lessons, and young-puppy Gracie quickly caught on that chasing our cats was not allowed. In all the years we had Gracie, she never once hurt or even ran after one of 'her' cats. Actually, our cats just loved her and would curl up next to her as she slept. Gracie only drew the doggie-line in the sand if the cats tried to take one of her chew-toys.... Gracie would just walk slowly towards the stolen chew-toy and take it away from the cat-thief.
My husband taught Gracie to sit and wait when she got to the corner of a street. Both Gracie and my husband would look both ways before crossing, but Gracie wouldn't move off the curb until my husband said "Let's go, Gracie!" My husband also taught Gracie to play "Hide and Seek," telling her to sit in the kitchen of our Clear Lake house while he went to another part of the house to hide. I would stand there with Gracie, counting to 20.... and then I'd tell Gracie "Go find Daddy!"... and off she would go, looking behind doors, in closets, behind furniture and curtains. She would have such a serious look on her face as she searched, and then as soon as she found him, she would break into that big doggie-smile of hers and literally jump for joy.
After countless times of Gracie 'finding' my husband, we decided to see what would happen if my husband and I changed places. He stood there with Gracie and counted to 20, and I went to hide. From the other side of the house, I could hear my husband saying "Go find Mommy!" Then I heard it again... and again... and yet again. Turned out that when my husband said that to Gracie, she just sat there in the kitchen, looking up at him and smiling, not at all interested in 'finding Mommy.' My husband felt so badly for me, but I just laughed. Gracie was his dog, and had been from Day One. I was just there to walk Gracie when he wasn't home, and I was the one who made sure she had food and water and chew-toys. In Gracie's mind, I could be replaced by a robot. But my husband was her Daddy.
When Gracie was about two years old, I was walking in the neighborhood park with a friend and we saw a man walking a dog that looked just like Gracie. I stopped to talk to the man, and I asked him about his dog.... he had adopted the dog (a male) from the same SPCA, in the same month and year as we had adopted Gracie. When we had first seen Gracie, they told us that she'd come to the SPCA with a male puppy from the same litter, so that man in the park that day was walking with our Gracie's brother. I told the man our Gracie's story, and asked him what he had named his dog..... his dog's name was George. I asked him why he chose that name, and he said the dog had the personality of his Uncle George, and they couldn't think of a better name for him, and the name George just seemed to be the best fit. We were both stunned..... George and Gracie! (Honestly, you just couldn't make this stuff up!) Later on that week, my husband and I walked Gracie across the park to meet her brother George, but they didn't remember one another at all. They sniffed each other, and then just sat there, content to chew on the dog biscuits that we had brought along for George.
When you don't have children, your pets become your children, and that's what happened with Gracie. When she was a small puppy, I took her to yard sales with me every Saturday morning. She would wait for me in the car and sniff and inspect everything I bought at the sales. If I bought a small stuffed animal for her, she would hold on to it during the rest of the car ride, then drop it at my husband's feet when we got home.
We took her to Galveston with us when we went to the beach... she would watch my husband swimming out in the Gulf, but wouldn't follow him out into the surf. Princess Grace didn't like getting her paws wet, but she wouldn't leave the water's edge as long as my husband was swimming. Gracie would sit there on the damp sand, waiting for her hero to come back from the sea.
When we traveled, we found an excellent pet-sitter for Gracie and our cats. The first time we went away, poor Gracie must have thought we had abandoned her. Our pet-sitter took a photo of Gracie after we'd gone, and the sad look on her face was heart-breaking. By the second trip, however, Gracie was smiling in the pet-sitter's photos.... she quickly learned that we'd be coming back, plus she truly trusted and loved the awesome man who took care of our 'gang' when we were gone. The pet-sitter always told us that he felt like "The Mayor of Clear Lake" when he was out walking Gracie because everyone knew her by name, everyone petted her, and Gracie even sat still when small children tugged on her fur, as if she knew they didn't know any better.
Gracie was 13 years old when we moved from the ranch-style house in Clear Lake to this three-story Victorian in the Hill Country. Not having grown up with steps and staircases, Gracie couldn't get past the first floor of this house. The main staircases are wood, and not carpeted, and Gracie's legs kept sliding as she tried to follow my husband up the stairs. More than once, Gracie slid back down the first three or four steps that she tried to conquer. We finally decided that to keep her safe, we had to keep her on the first floor only. Every night, we would say goodnight to Gracie, and tell her to stay in the kitchen. I put her blanket in a warm corner, and we got an area rug for the center of the room. She was comfortable, but I'm sure she wasn't too happy about not sleeping by my husband's side of the bed. Every morning when my husband came down the stairs, he would say "Gracie Boo-Boo! Good morning, Gracie!" And she would watch him walking down those stairs, smiling her big doggie-smile, and then rub herself against his legs like a cat.
Gracie seemed to like this house and the property. When we first moved here, she would lay in the grass under the pecan trees, just watching the country-world go by.... horses and cows and goats across the road, ducks in the pond, dozens and dozens of birds. There was one special day that my husband and I still talk about...... Gracie and the cats were in the shade under the trees, our chickens were pecking the grass near the flowerbeds, and my husband and I were picking the pecans that had fallen from the trees. It was a Norman Rockwell painting... with gentle Gracie knowing that the cats and the chickens belonged to us, that they were not for chasing or hurting... it was a painting come to life out here in the Hill Country.
In her 14th year, Gracie started to slow down. She didn't want to walk much, and would go into the yard and stay out there only if my husband was outside. With me, she would go out into the grass to 'take care of her business,' but then come back up on the porch, wanting to be back in the house and either on her blanket or in the middle of the kitchen rug. I was constantly tripping over her..... I would tell her "We have 23 acres here and you're always right under my feet, Gracie!" And she would look at me with sad eyes. (The doggie-smiles were only for my husband.)
On a hot summer morning in mid-July of 2010, I walked into the kitchen and found Gracie stretched out on the kitchen tiles. There was a puddle of blood underneath her, and she tried to wag her tail as I talked to her. I quickly called upstairs to my husband, we telephoned the vet, and within ten minutes we were out of the house and driving towards the main road with Gracie on a blanket in the back seat of the car.
The vet was gentle and kind, but the look on his face spoke volumes. A tumor had been growing inside of Gracie.... we had no idea. The bleeding meant that the tumor had burst, and its position made it totally inoperable, especially in a dog of her age. We didn't wake up that morning with the intention of having to make such a monumental decision about this once-tiny puppy who grew into a 48-pound dog who was exceptionally beyond measure in character, intelligence, and loyalty.
It was my husband's decision in 1996 to adopt Gracie, and it was his decision in 2010 to have Gracie put to sleep. My husband stayed with Gracie till the very end, but I waited outside the examining room. I think the hardest thing we had to do was leave her behind when it was all over. My husband walked back to the car holding Gracie's leash, and I was holding the receipt for the procedure. I remember getting into the car and looking at that piece of paper and thinking "This is how Gracie's life ends? With a piece of paper?"
The house without Gracie seemed too quiet and too empty. We weren't missing just a dog, we were missing a true member of our family. Cats are cats, and if you're lucky, you have cats that are social and interactive and interested in their humans, which our cats have always been. But a dog.... a dog is just different somehow. Your dog truly becomes part of your family; your cat believes it owns the family. And therein lies the difference.
We have been dog-less for four years now. Every once in a while, we look at Pet-Finders, or my husband looks at the sites for Border Collie rescues, and last year, we met a lady selling that tiny puppy that we would have named Winnie The Poohdle. (How we walked away from that one, I'll never know.)
I keep saying that I don't want another Border Collie, or even a Border Collie mix. Gracie didn't exceed the SPCA's estimate of 50 pounds, but still, at 48 pounds, she was a lot of dog to handle at times. (For me, anyway... for my husband, she was a piece of cake.)
If we had bought Winnie The Poohdle, I would have been dressing up that tiny dog in cute little outfits that would have embarrassed my husband. I know that he wants a bigger dog than one of the miniature or toy breeds, if we ever do get another dog. The bottom line is, my husband would really like another Gracie.
In my mind, there was only one Gracie. We were lucky enough to have her for 14 years, and my husband was lucky enough to have been adored by such a loyal and loving dog. I can still see Gracie's bright eyes when she was looking at my husband... her expression of love for him came from deep within her doggie-heart... her 'daddy' was her hero, her soul-mate, her god. Without a doubt, if Gracie could have put her 48-pound self into my husband's pocket, she would have. It's surprising to me that she never found a way to do just that.
Looking back now, maybe Gracie was smart enough to realize that she didn't have to put herself into my husband's pocket... all she had to do, and she most certainly did, was put herself into his heart.
And Gracie, truly amazing Gracie, is still there.
