Nadia - My Little Princess
7/22/1993 – 2/8/2008
My dear sweet Nadia – The Little Princess - Where do I begin? Just look at one of the sweetest little puppy faces EVER! She almost looked like a stuffed animal except for the fact you couldn’t keep her still for one second. We basically “rescued” her from a hovel where she was living with 7 other siblings outside on a deck playing, eating and sleeping in their waste. She was only 5 1/2 weeks old but we felt had to get her out of those living conditions.
Knowing the end was near for our big, beautiful gentle giant male Samoyed, Koty, we decided to get another dog to – what to ease OUR pain when he goes? Annoy the heck out of Koty until he leaves his wonderful life? Oh, wait – I KNOW!!! - it was because we wanted our house to be completely “renovated” by a Tasmanian Devil puppy!!! Yeah that’s it!! That sweet little puppy face you see managed to chew through any heavy duty plastic gate you could put up and climb over TWO of those baby gates stacked one on top of the other. OH NO!! What do we do now?? Well we KNOW that dogs LOVE their crates. Everyone tells us that and all the training books tell us that. So we decided to get Nadia a crate so she could LOVE it. NOT!!
We bought a crate – a nice big one because we knew she would be a fairly big dog. Maybe that was our first (maybe “second” hehe) mistake. We did the introduction thing of putting her food and water in there for a couple of weeks before actually locking her up in it when we went off to work. Personally, I don’t believe dogs should be put in crates –but many will argue that point with me. Anyway, even though we had the door to the crate open during her introduction period, she was not crazy about going in there for food, water, dog cookies, toys or anything else. During this introduction time of not locking her in the crate, we were putting up two tiers of baby gates in both kitchen entrances so she couldn’t get out. We were very silly. Of course she got out because she either chewed through the bottom gate or climbed up over both gates – all at the ages of 6 to 8 weeks! This went on until all the stores around us had their baby gate supplies depleted. It was TIME. Time for the LOCKED crate.
The first day of “the locked crate” I came home from work and she happily greeted me at the downstairs door. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the lock on the crate would actually keep her IN the crate. I was afraid to go upstairs and afraid of what I was going to find. How the heck could she have gotten out of that crate??? When I got upstairs, Koty gave me this look like he wanted to bite my leg off and chew it in front of me. He had, at this point, given us 12 good years and he was wondering why on earth were we punishing him? Well the crate was still locked but somehow Nadia managed to get the bottom metal tray OUT of the of the crate – there was an open space of about and 1 ½ inches, which apparently was enough for her to get out. What was she anyway??? Boneless?????? One of her FAVORITE mischievous things to do when she became “free” was to start re-arranging our wall to wall carpeting. And I can’t even imagine the torment she put on Koty, probably wanting him to play lots of puppy games all day.
Okay, so it wasn’t NEW carpeting- it WAS thirteen years old, so what was one little tear over by her crate? Not much- we could kind of fix that so it wouldn’t look so bad, right? It was multi-brown colored carpeting, so you could really hide a lot. That’s okay Nadia – you are just a puppy and puppies do things like this. Such a sweet little face and happy wagging tail – you just don’t know any better.– we must have put the crate together incorrectly for you to be able to get out like that.
Well put the bottom tray back in, correctly, which seemed to be the exact same way it was before but, oh well. The same thing happened the following day - she met me downstairs. We ended up (days later) using 4 heavy electrical ties to hold the bottom of the crate in and THREE locks on the crate door, and she was still getting out and happily greeting me a the downstairs door. We now KNEW she was boneless and could get through the little squares in the sides of the crate. Our little, sweet Houdini managed to escape from everything we could think of to keep her in the crate and, over a period of a few weeks, she completely tore up our living room, dining room and hallway carpeting. Our house had become a shambles! But you have to remember to go back and look at that face- that is NOT a face you can get rid of. We couldn’t part with her- we loved her from the second she licked us in gratitude for saving her from the hell she was living in.
компютри втора употребаWe eventually found out that she was actually BENDING the crate door at the bottom just enough so she could squeeze through. I could actually go on about the following weeks of the “crate” story, but I will cut this short except to say that I set up a “puppy cam” to see exactly what she was doing while we were gone. Poor thing was going CRAZY in the crate. Almost broke my heart to see what she was going through. I sent the video up to a doctor of psychology for dogs at Cornell University and paid $100 for a phone interview on her thoughts. (Okay so now I’m the crazy one). I was told to get a full-time babysitter for Nadia. Uhhhhh, I don’t think so.
Longer story short, we obviously ended up keeping her as she finally got to a point where we could leave her in “free roam” mode and not have her destroy the house any more. Well, what was left of it. She became the most loving little Sammy and she was a God-send when we lost our beloved Koty. She was two years old by then and gave us real comfort, even though we know she suffered from his loss as well.
Nadia was especially loving to my husband. You know – the one that walked her in the morning and once at night and then that was about it. Never took her to the vet, maybe fed her 25 times in the 14.5 years we had her and would get annoyed if she didn’t hurry up and do her business outside if it was raining. She would bring HIM the toys she wanted to play with and would have this bright eyed, excited look just waiting for him to throw it for her – very cute but nevertheless, it used to kill me that she seemed to loved him more than me, her primary caregiver. hehe. But make no mistake about it- he loved Nadia as much as any of us and may have been the one sobbing the loudest, as five adults took her for her last visit to the vet. Our Vet gave her a heavy sedative first and waited until Nadia was in a very, very deep sleep before administering the final shot. We felt Nadia leave us peacefully and the five of us just started crying our eyes out. It took us at least a half hour before we could compose ourselves enough to leave the room we were in and not totally upset everyone that was in the waiting room. I know we looked pathetic leaving but we really didn’t care. She was a member of our family and it just hurt so bad - it still does.
Unfortunately, she did prove to have a somewhat unstable personality. More than likely because she was taken from her mother so young. - she loved her family to pieces but would just as soon snap anyone else. EVERY single time we had people over (or even nearby) our mantra was “don’t touch her, don’t look at her, and don’t talk to her”. Yup – it was that bad. Forget kids. We always had to watch her around kids. What a shame – ALL the kids wanted to pet her because she was so fluffy and beautiful. I would have to hold her head while they pet her but I would prefer that they not come near her at all. Luckily, we never had an “incident” the entire time she spent with us.
So many years she was so loyal and so loving. It is so hard to watch them grow old – you give them medications to help them live more comfortably in their last years. But sometimes you can keep giving them medications that really serve no other purpose than to put off making that fateful decision. Then the day came and I KNEW I had to take her. To actually make an “appointment” was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. But it would have been unfair to make her spend one more day here when she is losing her dignity and the will to try to get up to get a drink or a bite to eat. Well, she could not get up any more. She had to be lifted to a standing position and half carried up and down the stairs. Although she did not eat much anymore, she still weighed 50 pounds and it was so difficult for us to carry her upstairs and try to prevent her from falling down the stairs while taking her out.
She didn’t give me any “real” signs that it was time, like our Koty did. We had to make the decision for her. I do know she is in a better place now – but I feel the emptiness of not having her here EVERY day, even after more than three months. Sometimes, I STILL expect to see her lying in the bedroom, which had become her den, of sorts, the last 4 months of her life.
My little girl – so sweet and so beautiful and so saucy! What a love. Thanks to my daughter I have this last picture of her that was in September, 2007 on her last vacation with us at the Outer Banks, NC. She was such a beauty. I miss you more than you can imagine, Nadia. Hope you, Koty and Bailey are having a blast!
Love you and miss you so much, Little Princess
Love Mommy
Cloning Your Pet??
It has come to light recently that there may be a new “in thing” to do, and that is to have your pet cloned. Apparently, you can seemingly have your “same” pet live forever as long as you are willing to spend your life’s savings to have a lab somewhere in the world mix the proper ingredients to make another Fido or Fluffy. And we would be doing this because . . .?? What - We want our “original” pet to live on until we tire of him being around, or he doesn’t fit into our lifestyle anymore. Then we can just toss that little clone right out in the street because it’s not “real” anyway? Don’t we have enough naturally born and bred animals that would just love to be loved that are waiting for us to visit them in their little prison cells at the local pound? Why would we want to bring more animals into this world when overpopulation of dogs and cats is at an all-time high? These “real” animals desperately need us and are just waiting for the chance to show you how much they can love you and how good they can be if given the chance. They are there because someone threw them away, mistreated them or the best one yet - because their humans moved. What is that?? Why can’t you take your pet with you? I’ve seen ads where the dog or cat has been a family member for years but they can’t take the pet with them because they are moving??? What could possibly be the reason??? Are you moving into jail? Pets not allowed where you are going (personally I just wouldn’t go THERE). Are you moving to the Antarctica or somewhere on the equator where the temperatures would not be “pet friendly”? There must be a very good reason you will be leaving your family member behind. To me, it would be like leaving one of my children behind. How can anyone with a conscience actually do that??
Cloning is NOT the answer to keeping Fido or Fluffy around forever. Cloning does not mean the “subject” clone will have the same personality or intelligence that the original did. It MAY, more than likely, look the same but it will NOT “feel” the same. It’s not going to be housebroken immediately or know how to use a litter box right out of the petri dish. You still have to train it, feed it, walk it and take it to the vet for all of it’s shots and when it gets sick.
There are usually specific reasons we love our pets so much. Maybe special tricks he learned, possibly the intelligence he shows doing certain things - maybe they just like to snuggle with you. Maybe you have a therapy dog, or a Seeing Eye dog or a cat that can actually climb walls when chasing a laser pen light. These are things that make your pet special and endearing to you and can not be duplicated in a clone. It is just not going to happen. Let’s think a little more about this and hope that this won’t become a way of “life” for our special four-legged friends. Let’s give those in the local pound a chance at life and happiness first. They can be just as special as your furry family member is now. Think about it . . . please and give the “originals” a chance to live. Cloning is not the answer folks.
Your thoughts and comments are welcome.