Just a girl and her dog.
Once upon a time, years ago now (summer 1995, to be precise), there was a stray who wandered into our yard and decided she liked it there, so she hung around for a week or two. We called her Muttly, and scattered pictures around the neighborhood, trying to see if she had a home to go back to. She was nice enough, but we already had a dog who we loved dearly (Lady, our first dog), and Muttly was also a bit of a hassle since she had no training. After she snapped at Lady over food too many times, and still with no one turning up to claim her, we decided it was time to take her to the Humane Society and hope for the best.
That was, of course, the same day that Muttly decided to make herself a den under the shelter in our old dog pen (built when we were asked to watch a friend's two dogs for a few weeks several years earlier) and have herself a batch of puppies. Great timing, yeah?
So, over the course of a week, we went from having one dog to having 7 (or 8?) of them. It was a bit of a surprise, to say the least. And we decided it would be better for the puppies if we waited for them to get old enough before we took them *and* their mother to the Humane Society. In an effort not to become attached, we gave all the puppies numbers instead of names. Or at least we *tried* to.
One - the biggest of the bunch, he was very black and very fuzzy, and kind of demanding. He eventually got renamed Bear because he really did look like a tiny black bear who just happened to have floppy ears.
Four - the runt of the litter, she was also one of the most active of the bunch. She was mostly white with black patches and spots, and had one eye that was half blue and half brown.
Seven - she was the quiet one of the litter. She was white with layered brown and black patches covering most of her body, and she got the name Sunday/Sundae because my mom once said she looked a bit like a hot fudge-and-caramel sundae. Actually, I think she had that name first, and the 7 came from "the seventh day of the week" kind of thing when we were trying to think of numbers.
Eighty-Six - the only other male, he was also black but not nearly as big as Bear, and had smoother fur (like labrador fur, only less coarse) with a small white spot right on his chest. He was named after Maxwell Smart from the old Get Smart series, who was also known as Agent 86.
And finally, Ninety-Nine - named after Maxwell's kick-ass female partner, Agent 99 - who also happened to have long, black hair.
As you would've expected, the whole number thing really didn't have it's desired effect. It's kind of hard not to get attached to five (or possibly 6 - I feel like I might be forgetting someone) adorable puppies. Ninety-Nine and Runt were personal favorites of mine, Mom got rather attached to Sunday, and I'm pretty sure my brothers had their own favorites from the mix, too. Not sure if Dad had any favorites; mostly, I think his inclinations were more along the lines of "What the *f@ck* did I do to get saddled with all these dogs!?" Not that I can blame him, really... puppies chew on everything, and they're little teeth are *sharp*.
So, for 6 weeks, give or take, we had a yard full of puppies. And I gotta say, those weeks are some of my favorite memories, right up there with Christmas Eves at Gramma and Grampa's and family road trips. One of my favorite games (and I'm pretty sure the puppies liked it, too) was to run off into the hay field next to the house with a pack of puppies chasing after me and lie flat in the long grasses waiting to see if they could find me. They always did, of course, but there were a few times where I got hidden fast enough that I could hear them yipping and panting as they ran past my current hiding place, a miniature stampede going by no more than a few feet away from me, before they back-tracked (consider that at the time the puppies were no taller than the grass I was hiding in) and came in for the pounce.
There were a few not so happy days, too. When they were still too small to have their eyes open, Muttly ended up rolling over and/or accidentally suffocating one of the puppies, before any of them even had names. Muttly wasn't the greatest mom, either (Lady was actually more of a mother to those puppies than she was). There were several times when she escaped the dog pen by digging under the fence, and of course the puppies would follow her once they got old enough. Being unable to keep up with a full-grown dog (Muttly was probably about 80 pounds, and mostly legs like Argyle was), there were at least three times when she returned and a few of her puppies wouldn't be with her. Which of course led all of us to spend the next hour or two running around trying to find the missing pups, both by foot and by car.
One of the first still-clear memories I have of Niner is during one of those frantic puppy searches. Muttly had pulled off one of her escape tricks again, and three of the puppies followed her. When she came back, only one was still with her, with Ninety-Nine and 86, I believe, still missing. We had already been looking for 45 minutes, so we were starting to get worried. We found 86 eventually (or he found us, I can't remember), but Niner was still missing. I'm not sure who was with me, but me and one of my family members ended up at our neighbors, asking if they had seen anything over the last few hours. It was as we were getting ready to leave and go back home when I heard something coming from the area of trees behind their house. We (who ever was with me and I) started yelling "Here, pups! Puppies!" and sure enough, here comes Nine, running from the trees, small, black, and soaking wet from the morning dew. Relieved, I rushed forward and scooped her up, not caring that she was wet and getting my t-shirt all muddy. She snuggled into my chest, making those cute puppy noises, and stayed there the rest of the way home. I think that was the first time I started thinking of her as mine.
Another week or two past, and the puppies got old enough to be away from their mom. We knew it was time to start posting signs and ads in the news paper, trying to find the them a new home. Runt was not surprisingly the first to go - she was just so freaking cute and playful, small but mighty. If I remember correctly, I think she (and possibly the sister I can't remember) went to a nice family with two or three kids. Bear was next - I'm pretty sure he went to a nice big farm somewhere outside of Marshfield, which made me happy. Dogs - especially big dogs, and judging from the size of his paws, Bear was going to be *big* when he grew up - need a big place to run around. 86 went soon after that, though I can't remember where. Then there was only Sundae and Ninety-Nine left. Dad said we could only keep one of the puppies, so when the people - a young couple with a home a few blocks away from my dad's store in Marshfield - came to pick from the two puppies left, they left it up to us which one we wanted to keep. It was a tough choice, but my brothers and I finally agreed on Nine.
So, that's how Niner came to be in the family. And it wasn't long before the sweet little puppy grew into a big, beautiful dog. In my own personal opinion, she was totally the babe of the neighborhood canine-world.
Anyway, she and Lady became best friends; light and dark, yin and yang, the angel (Lady) and the devil (Nine in that two-year "puppy" phase that labradors tend to have - yes, she's a mutt, but we're pretty sure half of her genes came from our neighbors black lab, so there you go). They did everything together and often times slept curled up against one another. And yes, it was just as adorable as it sounds.
Nine was also more "my" dog, too, if that makes any sense. While Lady was always more inclined to come to Mom when she was called, Niner would run to me. When my brother Ben started screaming because he happened to step on one of Nine's sharp bones with his bare foot, I was the one Nine hid behind and peered cautiously around while my brother apologized for scaring her. She was my snuggle pup, and I have long since lost track the number of times I ended up crying into the thick mane-like ruff of fur she had around her shoulders when I was feeling particularly alone and isolated. Not sure what it say about me that for more than 10 years, it was only a dog I let myself cry in front of, but she was there, and she didn't judge, and that's all that really mattered.
Nine also wasn't the fondest of being alone. She dealt with it whenever we traveled or spent the night at our grandparents in Ripon or somewhere, but she would make a point to be underfoot and in the why whenever she saw us loading up the car with over night bags. And after we got back from the week in Hawaii in 2005, she didn't didn't let any of us out of her site for at least two days, and made sure to always have at least one of us nearby for about a week after.
She recognized all of our cars, and would joyously greet us as soon as we got home after after being away. When my brothers went off to college and came home for visits, she would dash out to the drive way as soon as she saw/heard their cars coming up the road, ready to greet them as soon as they stopped. She did the same for me when I was in St. Cloud, so after 5-6 hours on the road, she and Argyle were the first bit of "home" I saw.
She adored kids and was right in the thick of it whenever we had summer bonfires and gatherings in our yard. She cheerfully stole my best friends hat when we were out sledding during her first winter and then led us I on a merry chase through the snow to retrieve it. She was there, curled beside me, while I stared at the sky and wished on a falling star for a friend to survive the night after a drug overdose.
She was one of my best friends, and I loved her dearly.
She loved car rides and swimming and going for walks; she hated taking aspirin for the arthritis she had since she was six months old, and quickly learned how to trick us into thinking she swallowed only to spit it out later when we weren't looking. She was right in the middle of the neighborhood Twilight Bark, often times, barking into the wee hours of morning. She loved playing in the snow and lifting her nose to the wind.
She was beautiful and fiercely loyal and so much stronger then we ever gave her credit for.
Ninety-Nine
July 25, 1995 to April 30, 2009
Rest in peace, Ninergirl. You will be missed.