When I was a child I never got to have a dog. My parents favored cats. I could go on and on about the many reasons why a cat was just not the perfect pet for me. I did have a couple of cats, but really the cats were my parent’s pride and joy, not mine.

I always wanted a dog, and had to wait until I was out of the house, married, and away from the folks. Actually I married a husband who came with a dog. Laddie was his name. (The dog, not the husband!!) Laddie was my first dog. He was my dog by marriage, so I guess you could call him my “step dog”.

The dogs in my life began with Laddie. Laddie was an old fashioned fox terrier, the kind whose nose had a definite profile, he was black and white and stood maybe eighteen inches tall. He was a gentle soul, a lot like his master. After the first treat from my hands he accepted me warmly into his life and guarded me against all real or imagined threats. He fended off the bats that occasionally made forays into our living space. Cats were anathema to him, so he definitely was my “kindred spirit”. He was very brave, except when it came to thunderstorms, which sent him into a tizzy.

Laddie was already an old dog when I first met him. He had arthritis and had a penchant for lying in the warmest place he could find. In those days, nobody chained their dogs and most people just let them outside and they sort of wandered. At least that’s what we did. It was the norm for the times. We lived in the married student housing at the university. They were a series of long low to the ground buildings with very little yard space, having an appearance of a long old fashioned motel. People called them the “rabbit hutches” because of the large numbers of small children that scampered through the yards. We had no children (except for Laddie) but all the parents around loved Laddie, because he would always seek out the warmest spot on the gravel road in front of the buildings, which was usually right in the middle of the road. All the traffic would slow down for him. Nobody would slow down for the kids, but they always slowed down for the old dog lying in the middle of the road!

When we had our baby, we brought him home from the hospital in a baby buggy  with fold up legs that doubled as a car bed. In those days Infant Car Seats hadn’t yet been invented. The car bed fit perfectly on the back seat. Laddie was introduced to the baby as soon as we got home and he immediately took up guardianship duties. He was ever so gentle with the little one, sniffing him and nosing him and curling up protectively at the base of the bassinet.

The first time that we went on a grocery trip to the local store, Laddie of course got in the car to go along. Whenever he went for a ride, he always started out in the front seat but soon would leap over into the back seat. That day we had put the baby bed in the back seat and thought nothing of it when Laddie clambered into the front seat to go along to the store. You can bet we thought about it when he suddenly sailed over into the back seat.
I’ll never forget the look on Laddie’s face when he looked down and saw that he was most likely going to land square on top of the baby. He truly panicked. Somehow, some way, he found an extra adrenalin surge….and suddenly he was flying! He landed in the back window! just goes to show you what a surge of adrenalin can do! After that we always fondly thought of Laddie as the flyng dog.