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| Sophie loved to be beautified and photographed. |
Sophie was the fulfillment of my wife’s lifelong dream
of owning and loving a Standard Poodle.
Well, I guess she owned her, technically, and she
certainly loved her. Sometimes, though, it seemed Sophie owned us more than we
owned her.
Delaine, my wife, had fallen in love with the big
poodle breed when she was a youngster and visited Texas relatives who had
somehow wound up living in New York. They had a black Standard Poodle. Playing
with that “dog” (we generally refer to them as babies, as we do not have
children together) on that summer visit started it all.
Later, when she was a teen, Delaine worked and earned
money to buy a poodle, although it was not a Standard Poodle. She loved that
baby all of its long life, though.
For a long time, she wanted a Standard Poodle.
She later bought a Cairn Terrier and named her Katy, after a city in her native Texas. Later, she saved a mixed dog from certain death in an Arkansas dog pound. That was
Dixie Belle, believed to be a mix of Sheltie and Pomeranian--I called her a
Shelteranian--who was always cute and puppy-like, even at the end of her long
life.
Those are the two Delaine had when I met her and
persuaded her to marry me. She had moved from Texas to Arkansas and now to the Missouri Ozarks for her job. We had both been through divorce, and she had no
human children. I had two grown children. So, we had her/our two babies, Katy and
Dixie Belle.
Within months of our marriage, though, Delaine found online a notice
that some folks way up in the upper peninsula of Michigan had some poodles for
sale. The Reiniches (their name) were not breeders; they loved Standard
Poodles, and their pair had babies. Mrs. Reiniche was intent on adopting out
the babies they could not keep, to people who met her standards for Standard
Poodle parenthood.
Delaine passed the test, and we drove way up north to Michigan,
the upper peninsula, way up there under Lake Superior, to get the baby we would
name Sophia, Sophie for short.
The story of how she got her name is an embarrassment
to me, but I’ll tell it anyway.
Talking about what we would name the new, black puppy
that we were going to go pick up in Michigan, we tossed around some names.
Delaine said the best names for canine babies end in “ie” or “ey” or “y.” She
had read that the little ones respond best to names with an “e” sound at the
end.
“Well,” I said. “She’s a black poodle. Let’s name her
for that black blues singer, Sophie Tucker. Let’s call her Sophie. Her real
name on her registration can be Sophia, but we’ll call her Sophie.”
Delaine thought that was a great name.
Imagine how I felt a couple of years later when I
found out that Sophie Tucker was actually a white Jewish torch singer, not a
black blues singer. I'm a hillbilly, raised on bluegrass and country music, so I am not at fault. I blame Delaine; she grew up in big Texas city, Houston. She should have known better. Oh, well, But such a mistake was unimportant, and we didn’t care. We
just loved our Sophie.
I called her the “clown of the canine world,” because
she was comical. I don’t remember everything exactly now what she did that made me laugh;
I merely remember a lot of laughing at her antics, a lot of it.
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| Such a beautiful girl. |
It didn’t take much for me to laugh at her, though. For instance, from my easy chair in the living room in our old house, I could look through the dining room into the kitchen where there was a window to the backyard, a window that Sophie could look through and see me when she wanted to come in.
“I see a big giant head looking at me,” I would say,
laughing and getting up to go let her in.
She often slept between Delaine and me. I loved the
times I woke up with a head next to my shoulder and soft breathing in my ear.
Yes, it was always Sophie, not Delaine.
On Saturday mornings I would sleep a little later than
normal and then let the babies out. Then we’d all get back in bed together.
Sophie often would get back between us to be petted and talked to, first by her
Mama and then by me.
She was the biggest lap dog I had ever experienced.
When I was a kid, we had a little pound puppy named Susie who sat in my lap,
but she was small. Sophie, though, was a 65-pound girl who would jump on my lap
when I sat down in my recliner and put my legs up to read or watch TV. She would
usually lie down lengthwise with her face down by my feet and her tail up on my
chest. Yes, occasionally she would burn my nostrils and eyes. I’d gladly put up
with that again, if I could.
Katy and Dixie Belle loved her. She was about the same
size as they when we got her, but it was not long—too soon, in fact—that they
were able to easily walk under her.
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| Sophie and her Mama loved to have matching fingernails. Yes, those are fingers on Sophie's hands, not paws. |
Those were the three we had several years. Then Katy, a cantankerous old girl, died after a long life. We got Henry, a white Standard Poodle to fill that void, and he is the subject of many other stories. After Dixie Belle passed, we got Grace Claire, or Gracie. That meant we had three Standard Poodles at once.
Henry and Sophie loved one another, like a son and
mother. Sophie loved Gracie Claire, too.
Henry tolerated her.
As Sophie aged, her black hair began turning gray. She
seemed to begin losing her eyesight. Her hips began to fail, and she had
trouble getting up to walk. That meant I had to lift her up to get her on her
feet. She could walk to the back door and go outside. On the grass of the back
yard, she seemed more sure of herself than on the hardwood floors of our old
house.
Eventually, she was unable to walk on those floors
without falling, so I would have to bend over put my hands, clasped, under her
belly and hold her up while she walked to the backyard, like a wheelbarrow, where
she could manage on the grassy surface.
Eventually, I had to carry her to the back yard, where
she could walk, although that ability began to falter, too. I had to pick her
up sometimes and put her back on her feet.
Many weeks, I picked her up and carried her to the
back yard. I also picked her up and stood her in front of her food bowl and
held her while she ate. I even fed her by hand sometimes.
Towards the end of her life, we adopted another baby
from an animal shelter. That is Roland Dudenhoffer , the Little Dude, who is a
terrier mix of some sort. He loved the big black Standard Poodle who spent most
of her time on her mat on the floor, asleep; The Dude loves everybody and
everything, including Buddy the cat.
Finally, on that morning Delaine two years ago texted
me at work that our sweet Sophie had passed.
I really miss that baby. I give God credit for all the
good things that come to or happen to me. So, I thank God for Sophie and the
whole crew.
All of our babies are special to us, but Sophie might
be the most special of all. She must have been, for she turned me into a poodle-loving man.
