When my dog Jesse died in 1988, I wanted to adopt another dog. Jesse was such a good dog, I knew I would never find another one like her, so I wanted to find a dog that wasn’t like her. I bought some dog books – this was before the Web – and finally decided on a Doberman pinscher. It sounds odd now, but it didn’t take long to find a Doberman at the small local pound in Rome. She was about three or four months old. The workers at the pound knew who she belonged to. They said the wife wanted her back, but the husband refused to pay the few dollars it took to bail her out. Jerk.
The first thing this new dog did when I got her back to my parents’ house was to poop in my mother’s living room. I am amazed to this day at how well my mother took it.
The new dog became Sheba. We lived a simple life in a little mobile home in a little mobile home park in the middle of a soybean field north of Huntsville. I took her for a walk every day. She walked exactly like a dog is supposed to walk, right beside me. I was so used to having Jesse run wild around me on walks that I thought Sheba was not having a good time. But she was just being a good dog.
Sheba went everywhere with me, just like Jesse did. The first summer I had her, she went with me to visit my friend Tom in New Mexico. This is Sheba on that trip at Four Corners, wondering what I’m doing.
Sheba turned into a handsome dog. Here she is a few years later next to Debra, Tom’s niece.
When I came home from work, Sheba always wanted to greet me with something in her mouth. One night when I was driving back to visit my parents, I ran off the road and wrecked my car. The rear window came out, and Sheba ran away. I called her, but couldn’t find her, and eventually I had to have my parents come and pick me up. I hit my face on the steering wheel and was knocked so silly that I couldn’t think straight at the time. The next day I went back to look for her. The kind person whose house I had gone to after the wreck said a big, black dog had shown up at a neighbor’s house. We went over to look, and there was a Doberman. All Dobermans look pretty much the same, so I wasn’t sure at first that it was her. But when she saw us she picked up a pine cone to bring to us. That’s when I knew it was her.
Once when I took her with me on a trip to the west coast, we stopped at a beach somewhere in Oregon or Washington. We walked out to the edge of the surf, and she took off running right at the water’s edge. She ran flat out until I could barely see her in the distance, and then she turned around and ran back. Another time I took her to a lake near Huntsville. I let her off the leash and she spent about an hour running back and forth splashing in the water. I never worried about her coming back. I trusted her completely off the leash.
When I finally bought a house in 1992, it was at the end of a dead-end road, more than a mile from the highway. My new neighborhood was out in the country, with big lots and only a few neighbors who grew to know me and Sheba from our daily walks. I thought it was a great place for a dog, and perfectly safe to let her stay outside at home when I was at work. Every morning when I left for work she was on the deck, watching me leave, and every afternoon when I got back home she was on the deck, waiting for me.
And then one day she wasn’t on the deck. I called and called, and I looked at looked. I walked all over the mountain that my house backed up to. I talked to neighbors. I drove up and down the roads, looking in the ditches. I put a classified ad in the paper. I put a display ad in the paper. My vet let me borrow a list of veterinarians and I sent a hundred letters out to vets all over north Alabama and south central Tennessee. I read the lost and found ads in the local paper for a year. But I never saw Sheba again.
My memories of Sheba are colored by my guilt at not keeping her safe. That sense of guilt tends to eclipse the good memories I have, and that’s not fair. Sheba was a good dog, and a happy dog. The least she deserves now is to be remembered as that happy dog.
Sheba, in a scan of a fuzzy old print.
Is that Sheba in you blog banner image? A truly sad story; what made you post it today?
Our cats are indoor cats that had been strays. I feel somewhat bad about cooping them up in the house after they had been able to roam freely in their previous lives. However, I also know that every single stray cat that had been hanging around my nature preserve disappeared in short order after coyotes arrived on the scene three years ago, so our cats’ lifespans would be very limited outside. Occasionally, one of our cats will “escape,” and I’m beside myself until I can get the cat back inside safely.
My brother-in-law lives in a densely developed subdivision in San Diego. His cat used to wander outside. One evening, he heard terrible screeching and ran outside to discover the cat in the jaws of a young coyote. The coyote panicked when he saw my brother-in-law and dropped the cat. The cat survived after significant costly and prolonged medical attention.
Scott – That’s Zeus in the blog banner. He was my fourth doberman. He’s gone, too. There wasn’t a particular reason to blog about Sheba now. I have been meaning to post about all of my dogs as a way of honoring their memories.
We have coyotes up here on the mountain, but for some reason they seem to stay away from the house. I understand that many coyotes live in close proximity to humans, but these haven’t reached that point. Our outdoor cats are lucky in that respect. Two of the strays never come in, and all of the rest spend the night outside if the weather is not too cold. That may have to change if the coyotes get too bold.
This is such a sad story, Mark. Sheba sounds like a wonderful, well-loved dog, and it must have been such a heartbreak to lose her like that. Gone, with no answers.
Robin Andrea — I guess every story about a pet has to end sadly, sooner or later, but this one was hard to accept.
I’m both grateful and saddened by this story. I’ve had dogs in my life too, and you’re right, sooner or later they have an unhappy ending to their tale. Thanks for posting this.
Pablo — Yes. For me, I guess, part of having a dog is trying to make sure it has a good life for however long it lives. Several of my past dogs were picked up off the street as strays who would almost certainly have died pretty quickly without my intervention. So, eventually they died, but in the meantime they had a soft bed, a warm place to sleep, plenty of food, and lots of petting.
Scott — My brother used to live in San Diego in a neighborhood next to an open area. He said cats in his neighborhood learned quickly to stay up high at night, on a roof or a fence, or they ended up a coyote’s dinner.