by ghostsniper
Published by by Vanderleun on December 1, 2021

Just this morning I was doing some rudimentary figuring and found out over the past 7 years and 2 months I have given my mutt Shannon over 25,000 cookies. That’s a lot. I had no idea. Funny how habits work, start off slow and the next thing you know it’s over the top.

The cookies are really large breed Iam’s dog food. Brown, about 5/8″ in diameter, and my left britches pocket always has a bunch of them in there. In the winter they are in my left downvest pocket that I wear constantly.

From the very first day we got Shannon when she was but a pup a few months old she has learned that I always have a cookie for her and sometimes she must earn them. This is how she has learned to take care of “business” like a machine. A friend came by one time when she was in the process of doing business and said it was the damnedest thing he had ever seen. Shannon has her own private yard that is fenced in and it is only for doing business and is cleaned daily. After breakfast each day she launches to her yard and does business one and immediately races to me for her reward, for which she jumps real high at full speed and she gets her cookie. She gobbles it down then relaunches back to the yard for business two, then back to me for cookie two. Like clockwork. Only once, since we’ve had her, did the “timing” get off and I believe it was because I think she may have eaten bunny poop. After a few days, she was back on track.

So Shannon gets 2 cookies at breakfast and 2 at supper, and 1 at bedtime, and about 5 more throughout the day. An average day means she enjoys 10 or more cookies. That’s 3,650 cookies a year. Over 7 years it adds up.

It’s not about the cookies, with Shannon. After all, her breakfast and supper are the same Iams large breed dog food. It’s the routine, and that I praise her heavily every.single.time. I give her a cookie. It’s a bond reinforcement. She and I are together almost every waking moment and usually she must be within inches of me. Her favorite place to be is wrapped up in the spokes/legs of my desk chair. Yes, that is dangerous, and she’s been rolled over a few times, and I’ve even scolded her about it. But she won’t be deterred. She must be as close to me as possible at all times.

If I get up from my chair Shannon gets up from the spokes and she’ll look at me with her ears up wondering what we’re gonna do next. Usually it is something mundane like going to the house and fixing a cup O’mud. Walking beside me across the bridge she is bubbling over in the joy of just living. Dancing, even in circles, prancing, and jumping, and nipping at my fingers. It is a big thing for her to just walk to the house. She’s easily amused and entertained.

In a way, Shannon is my best friend, even better than my wife of 37 years, because we spend so much time together. Even though my wife runs her business out of the house and I run mine out of my detached office/workshop we only see each other occasionally during the day, like when I got in the house to make my cup O’mud. Even though she and I are usually less than 100′ apart during the day it’s not unusual to not see each other until supper time when we sit down together, along with Shannon to break bread. The rest of the time it’s just Shannon and me.

After my last mutt died, in 2014, I didn’t really want to get another one. My previous mutt’s lifestyle and mine were pretty much like mine is with Shannon. We were heavily invested in each other and when she was gone an enormous vacuum existed and I floundered on how to fill that void. I just couldn’t get the thought of her out of my head. Almost every second of every day was filled with misery and there was nothing I could do about it. The thought of getting another mutt was almost repulsive to me. Like I was desecrating the memory of my deceased mutt. My wife would bring it up and I’d quickly dismiss it, even getting angry about it at times. It got so bad that I told her to not bring it up again. “If I want to get another mutt at some time in the future I’ll decide.” She told me she hates to see me down in the dumps about the loss. I told her there is nothing to be done and to stop trying to fix something she has no control over.

In mid-Sept of 2014, my wife sent me an email. “At the risk of making you angry, I just had to take a chance and send this to you. Take a look and see what you think.” The email had a link to a website for a dog kennel about 40 miles from here. The link had a mutt that they recently received and she was ready to be adopted after she had met their requirements. I looked, then I closed the site and forgot about it. Two days later, on a Friday, I looked at the website again. I went in the house and told my wife that we are going to Bargersville to look at “Spirit” the 4 month old female hybrid Australian Shepard – Brittany Spaniel at the website.

When we got to the Golden Post Kennel to see Shannon (her name was Spirit at the time), they brought her out to my wife and me in the front room and we were all glad to see each other for our very own and particular reasons. Spirit was overly bubbly and was jumping up at us uncontrollably and I knelt on the ground at her level. The leash and collar arrangement they had on her was difficult to work with as it was all one piece. The leash was basically wrapped around her neck and acted as a collar, and it’s impossible to control an animal in that manner.

After a few minutes, we went to an outside area in the rear that was enclosed on all 4 sides. This area was about 100′ wide by about 50′ deep and had a 10′ chainlink fence on the 2 ends. The front of this area was enclosed by the office building itself. The rear of this area was contained by a row of kennels with a chainlink fence separating them from this large open area. Each of the kennels had dogs in them, some 30 kennels in a row, and each kennel had a barking and curious dog in it. Various people were coming and going in this “meet and greet” area so the distractions were immense and a quality interview with Spirit was almost impossible. We were in this area for about 20 minutes and weren’t making much headway. My wife and I frequently looked at each other in frustration and wondered aloud if we were doing the right thing. The situation was so difficult I had my doubts as to whether this whole thing was right. I needed to find a way to break through the chaos and discover what I needed to know. I needed to know if Spirit was the dog I was going to invest a big part of my life in and with.

At one point I decided to try something to see how Spirit would act toward me. I told my wife to stay here and without saying another word to anyone I walked to one corner of the 50’x100′ space and just stood there for a moment. In short order, Spirit came over by me and just stood there. Without looking at, or acknowledging her, I started slowly walking to the opposite end some 100′ away. Spirit followed, and my wife stood in the middle observing, not saying a word. The mayhem meanwhile continued all around us. When I got to the corner I stopped and just stood there, again not saying anything to anyone and just observing out of the corner of my eye. Spirit stopped at that corner too and acted like she was waiting for direction on what to do. After a moment I started slowly walking toward the next corner, Spirit again followed.

Keep in mind there were numerous distractions all along, dogs barking uncontrollably, kids and adults running about, cars coming and going, etc. I repeated my previous behavior at this corner and then started walking to corner 4, again Spirit followed me. Spirit had been off the leash the whole time we were in this enclosed area and could have run off, so she was following me of her own volition. I stopped at corner 4 and stood there, by now Spirit was in tune with what I was doing.

I started walking to corner 1, where we had started, and Spirit followed me again. When we got to that corner I stopped and just stood there, and so did Spirit. I looked down at her and she was looking around, but she already knew where she was supposed to be – by me. I knelt down and wrapped my arms around her and told her she was a good gurl and she turned into a fountain bubbling all over the place.

Her natural charms had worked their spell and cut through the fog of distraction and confusion and overwhelmed my emotions. She won me and I stole her.

That clinched the deal for me, she was now my gurl and we just had to go through the formalities to make it so. My wife went inside and handled all the administrative tasks and I releashed Spirit with my own hardware I had brought along and she and I went out front to the huge grassed yard with large shade trees and boulders. We walked about and Spirit grew more comfortable with me, and I was learning her. I had not spent more than a few minutes with any dogs in more than 6 months and they of course were other people’s dogs, so not only was I finding Spirit I was finding me.

I sat down on a large boulder and Spirit climbed up on top to be near me. I spoke to her and she listened to me. I could see it in her eyes. Finally, she had found someone that wanted to spend time with her, just her, for the first time in her life. And I found someone to help me heal, to become whole again, to fill a void that had only seen despair for so long. She seemed appreciative if that is possible. She was very excitable but I attributed that to her very young age of 4 months. Everything around her was new all the time and warranted investigation. I understood this and allowed her to find her way. In a moment I was back in her main view and she was glad of it.

The printer was causing problems inside so it took my wife an unusually long time to join Spirit and me, maybe 20-30 minutes. The yard we were in was vast and was surrounded on 3 sides by an immense cornfield with stalks 10′ high, it was like we were in an enclosed castle yard. Cars came and went from the parking lot next to the yard and people would walk past us to their cars. On 2 occasions people stopped and told us how good we looked together and wished us luck and I thanked them. Finally, my wife emerged with the paperwork in hand that legally made Spirit ours, and us, hers. The two women that owned the place came out and wanted to take a picture of us for their Facebook page. Everybody thanked everybody and wished each other luck and we, my wife, Spirit, and I, jumped in the car and headed for home, Spirit’s new home.

Spirit, now “Shannon”, is laying on her blanky here next to my chair in front of my desk in my office.
Shannon is sleeping, and just now she let out with a low woo-woo-woo, from something she is dreaming about. I hope she is not having a bad dream of the days when no one wanted her. I hope she is dreaming about the good times she and we have had since she’s been here and the many more good times we will have in the future.

I name my mutts after 1970’s songs.
The first one was named “Dusty”, for “Dust in the Wind” (Kansas)
The next one was named “Lady” (Styx)
The next one was “Brandy” (Looking Glass)
And now “Shannon” (Henry Gross)