New Four Legged Friends and Nostalgia
05 May 2012
My bro with his dog, my sister with Rusty and my mom back there with Fuzzy who is trying to keep up in her older age
Yesterday I went out to a beautiful house by the ocean that is filled with life in many forms. My purpose there? To meet a family of six: four four-legged friends, a winged family member and a two-legged individual. I’ll be doing some petsitting for them and wanted to meet everyone and make sure that it would be a good match. It absolutely was. I already feel like I fit in with the family, a second caretaker to help out as needed but also a new friend. I’m sure there were many reasons that it was the right match but what really resonated with me was the uncanny resemblance that the two dogs of the family bear to the two dogs that I left behind when I moved here to the city 6 years ago.
First, why I petsit
Rusty, my Little Man
I’ve probably mentioned here a few times that I petsit on occasion. (I know that on my crochet blog I’ve shared photos of Betty, the cockapoo I watch, when I’ve crocheted clothing for her during my stays at her house.) I petsit in part for extra cash but that’s not the main reason that I do it. The real reason is because I really miss having pets in my life. I grew up in a family that always had more than one furry friend in the house at a time. I carried on that tradition myself when I moved out of my parents’ home, taking our young puppy Fuzzy and a newborn pup Rusty to my new home across town.
When I moved to San Francisco, there was just no way that I could bring them along. They were used to having huge yards with lots of space to roam. It wouldn’t have been fair to put them into an apartment even if I could find an apartment that would take me, my roommate and the two dogs and still be affordable for me as a young freelancer. So they stayed behind with Mom and Dad and I visit a few times a year.
Fuzzy with her “I didn’t do anything” look
Moving here was the first time that I didn’t have pets to care for. It was sad and lonely in some ways and really liberating in other ways. I hadn’t realized how much care and attention pets need until I didn’t have them anymore. It provided a great opportunity to really focus on myself and my needs and that has been beneficial. Now that I’ve done that for awhile, I’d like the responsibility of a pet again. (What I really want is a Shiba Inu puppy, after having fallen in love with one my brother was petsitting a few years ago.) But the apartment I am in (which I love for many reasons) doesn’t allow pets so that’s going to have to wait until I move again.
And that’s why I petsit. I get to enjoy the joy and responsibility and companionship of a few good furry friends again. And having learned how much of a responsibility a pet is, I am also happy that I am able to give someone else the chance to get away and focus on themselves now and then while knowing that their pets are in good hands.
Now, about Rusty and Fuzzy
We had a lot of dogs in my childhood, including Playful who was our wonderful Australian Shepherd that we had for the entirety of my childhood. But Rusty and Fuzzy were special because they were mine, not the family’s. I didn’t realize until I had them what unique personalities pets have and what an interesting dynamic can develop between two pets in the same family. There had always been the five of us humans in the house plus a couple of dogs and some cats and some other creatures and I was a kid the entire time so I didn’t really see any relationships that might have developed. The dogs were our friends, but I didn’t really think about their personalities much. Rusty and Fuzzy changed that, in part because I was alone with the two of them and in part because they had such intense, defined, curious personalities.
Fuzzy as a puppy
Fuzzy was my smart dog (despite her silly name which I have to blame on being young when we named her). She’s a big black lab/ chow mix with cute white paws and an intelligence that was usually fascinating and sometimes annoying. Annoying like the time when I realized that the reason Rusty was so skinny was because Fuzzy had figured out how to drag his dish and hers to the same spot and surround them both with her arms so that he couldn’t eat. Annoying like the long period of time when I kept trying to figure out what the heck was wrong with her leg only to eventually realize that she was faking a limp to get sympathy and special treatment. I kid you not. She even did something similar recently, at fifteen years of age. My mom and sister took the family’s other dog for a walk and Fuzzy isn’t in any shape to go anymore so she moped around the house while they got ready, acting bedraggled and huffing and puffing and on the verge of death. Then while they were gone she managed to sneak into my sister’s backpack and steal some food that she found in there, happily munching away at it with no breathing problems in sight when they returned. That’s my dog.
Rusty as a puppy
Rusty was my little cutie pie. He was adorable and lovable and fun. As he grew older, I called him my Little Man, because he got this regal older man look and yet somehow retained this little puppy attitude at the same time. I loved Rusty but there’s no nice way of putting it … he was dumb. Dopey is the word I usually use because he had these huge paws that he never quite grew into so he was a bit gangly. But not the brightest crayon in the box. Fuzzy would always figure out how to do things and he would always follow along after her, often not in the smartest way. Like how Fuzzy learned how to hook her paw’s nail into the screen door and open it so that she could come in and out from the front yard and Rusty eventually, after a long time, figured out that he could also get in that way but only by running full force into the door and butting it with his hard head so that it would spring open and he could dash in before it closed again. Ah, Rusty. It was a good thing, sometimes, that he was as dumb as he was. That dog could jump higher than any circus dog and if he had been any brighter then he might have figured out that if he moved up and over, instead of just up, he could easily jump the small fence that kept them in the yard. Luckily, he was never quite bright enough to get that idea and Fuzzy’s hip problems meant that she couldn’t do it to show him.
Oh Rusty. All of our girl dogs were spayed but Rusty was never neutered. He was forever trying to get into Fuzzy’s pants and she never let him. So he was super excited in his old age when my brother’s two girl dogs moved in for awhile. He immediately began trying to get some action. Sadly, my wonderful dumb little dog, did not know that the girl’s head is not what he was supposed to be aiming for.
The dynamic between them was always fun to see. Rusty brought out the fun side of Fuzzy. I don’t think that she would have been nearly so playful if it had just been me and her that moved out together, especially as she got older and the pain in her body got worse. But Rusty endlessly demanded that she play with him. And she did, until she’d get tired of his antics and warn him away and he’d get that “aw shucks” look and wander off until it was time to persistently return to get her attention again.
Rusty died last year, suddenly, without warning. I was shocked. Although in a way I’m kind of happy for him because if there’s any good way to go then it’s running around happily to the very moment when you suddenly aren’t anymore. I’ve been surprised that Fuzzy hasn’t succumbed to the same fate. As they got older, I always wondered how one would live without the other. She’s hanging in there, doing her own thing.
Old Memories, New Dogs
From the scrapbook: Fuzzy half-shaved after a surgery and Rusty ready to play
I think about Rusty and Fuzzy every now and then but I hadn’t thought about them this deeply until yesterday when I met these new dogs. They aren’t quite the same breed, but they are so similar to Rusty and Fuzzy in so many ways. The girl is a larger, black dog with white paws (like Fuzzy has) and hip problems (like Fuzzy has) and a loving face (like Fuzzy) and a smart mind (like Fuzzy). The boy is a smaller brown dog (like Rusty) with an adorable face that is half pup/ half old man (like Rusty) and this great lap dog attitude (like Rusty) but maybe not the smartest cupcake in the batch (aw, like Rusty). The boy could probably run and play endlessly but is held back a little bit by the girl’s handicaps; the girl benefits from pushing herself a little bit to keep up with the boy and get extra joy out of life.
Of course, there are differences between these dogs and my dogs, since each pet is unique and each set of animal dynamics is unique. Rusty was always my jealous dog. For all thirteen years of his life I couldn’t have a single moment with Fuzzy without Rusty coming in and sticking his nose in my face and his paw on my hand. I’ve only just met these new dogs so it’s hard to tell but I think if either of the two is jealous in this pair it’s the girl and it’s more because she sees the boy as “her baby” than because she needs the human attention desperately herself.
Fuzzy hogging a huge bone, circa 1999
And I’m sure that they have little quirks of their own that I’ll see as time goes on that are different from my dogs’ little quirks. Like how most people wouldn’t know that Fuzzy, my huge independent dog who rarely wanted me for much, would cower right on top of me in bed anytime there was a thunderstorm. It didn’t matter how old she got, how many storms she’d seen or how large of a space there was on the bed … she would run in, dig her way under the blanket and be right up on top of me until the storm ended. Recently we realized that her hearing is really going because there was a storm in Tucson and she didn’t notice.
As a petsitter, I obviously won’t know nearly as much about these new pets as I knew about mine living with them day in and day out. But I can tell that they have these wonderful personalities and it will be so fun to learn more about them and watch them grow and get to be a small part of their lives. I look forward to it all.
(And by the way, the family also has a beautiful bird and two gorgeous cats. I won’t go into all that right now but let me say that I’ve never met a Burmese cat before and I am now sold on the idea that if I ever get a cat again it’s going to be a Burmese! Oh and the human in their family is wonderful and warm, too.)
that has wearable artwork including fiber art from 60 artists.
