AN ODE TO TUCKER- MY BEST BRITTANY EVER

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Anyone who knows me knows I am always saying, there are only two sources of unconditional love, G O D and D O G.  All right, they aren’t the only sources but they are the most guaranteed ones.  God promises that nothing can separate us from his love, nothing, and dogs, most dogs, will greet you with a wagging tail even if they don’t know you.  Well, in November, I lost one of those sources, the one with the wagging tail.  Tuck.

 And if any of you follow this blog, you might have wondered what cliff I dropped off of, for the end of the year saw no entries.  If I recall correctly, I last left you on the cusp of my daughter’s wedding, which went off splendidly even though Hurricane Matthew was barreling down on us.  Torrential rains for the rehearsal (it was an outdoor wedding) but brilliant blue skies, with wild, cold, wind for the event itself.  We all had goose bumps through the outdoor ceremony for more reasons than just being moved by it all. But I digress.

Tuck, was the third in a line of Brittany’s we have owned. It is a breed that I stumbled on when we lived in IL.  I had been lobbying for a dog for about 8 yrs. to no avail.  When my second daughter was about 18 months she would hold out her arms saying “doggie, doggie, doggie!” every time one passed.  So when I finally convinced my husband to look at puppies, nothing large, maybe a dachshund, upon seeing them he said, “If you’re going to get a rat, get a dog”.  OK! Instantly I was researching for breeds that were good with children, then pouring over the classifieds and found a farm nearby selling Brittany Spaniels. By nightfall we had our first dog, Charlie (Pat, I thought this was about Tucker) Well, yes but this is how it all got started.  Charlie deserves his own Ode because he was such a great dog that we have stuck with Brittany’s ever since.

But of all of them, Tuck was the best.  Loving and kind as Charlie, not an Alpha like my second one Tyler and the best at, more or less, knowing where I was on any hike and checking back with me, in a reasonable amount of time.  Brittany’s are bred to flush game so they instinctively want to be ahead of you.  Both Tyler and Tuck were lucky enough to be raised on Cape Cod, a place that has set such a high bar for fabulous places to hike off leash that I daily lament not being there. 

 It was Tuck that made my trip to New England possible the summer after fracturing my leg.  Without him I could have only gone as far as my crutches would carry me, but I hitched his harness up to a patched together wheelchair and off we went. He was my one man Iditarod pulling me along beach boardwalks, Harbor Place in Baltimore, rail trails on the Cape etc. It was the most fabulous 2 months of travel and I could never have done it without him.  Thank you Tuck.

 It was Tuck that was the real naturalist in the family.  I always took him on trails prior to taking people so he could alert me to things I would have missed.  Here in Texas there are multiple armadillo homes but he would let me know by his enthusiasm, which ones were occupied and which were not. I always gave him the credit too.  “My dog got really excited about something coming up on the trail, can you find what it was?”

He died right at the end of the teaching season, and I couldn’t imagine how I would go there without him.  I couldn’t imagine a lot of things without him.  My trips to New England in the summer, hiking our favorite beaches and marshes together, playing with the grandchildren who loved him too, it just was all so sad.  BUT I never was parted from that primary source of unconditional love and God who always goes before me, has amazingly lined up another Brittany.  A rescue, a female named Dakota that I shall get tomorrow!! How this amazingly came to pass is a story for another day.

But for now, we salute you Tucker, my soul mate, my kindred spirit. I love that God says he prepares a room for us and I have already asked him that in that room he makes room for Tucker and Charlie and maybe even alpha Tyler. No dog takes the place of another, but they simply expand the list of dogs we have loved.

I end with a poem my 8-year-old grand daughter gave me for Christmas, the best gift ever.

 And so do we all.