Amber-Annie — The Timeshare Dog
All three of us lay on the floor with her — me, Grace, and our vet, Patty. We each had a hand buried in her long red hair, scratching and caressing as the drugs ended her pain by ending her life.
We have permission to grieve the loss of a loved one, a wife or husband, parent or child. Your loss is assumed to be overwhelming and incapacitating. But when you lose a pet, when you have to go full-on Ol’ Yeller and put your dog down, then it’s all stiff upper lip and get back to work.
This is not another sad dog story. This is the story of Amber-Annie, the luckiest dog in the world!
Grace always had dogs. Before we met, she lived on a lake in the north woods of Minnesota. She had two young boys, two golden retrievers and a collie. Goldens are genetically wired to be happy-go-lucky goofballs, and collies balance the scale. They worry about everything and fretfully herd anything on legs. By temperament, her boys were goldens, so Grace trusted the collie to keep them safe out in the woods.
One by one, her dogs died and were eventually replaced. In the divorce, her ex got the two new goldens and Grace got the collie, actually her third collie. This one, Sophie, was a rescue of sorts. Grace saw an ad for tri-color collie pups, but when she arrived at the address they were all gone but one, and that one was in a perpetual state of trauma. It ran to the furthest corner of the dog run and trembled. When Grace approached, it looked at her with terror in its eyes, and when she scritched its ear, it went limp and lay on the dirt. Grace told the breeder thanks, but no thanks.
“You take that pup, lady,” he said, “or as soon as you’re gone, I’m gonna shoot it.”
On the long ride home, Sophie, as she was immediately named, stood on the back seat of the Taurus. After a while, Sophie very, very tentatively reached her head forward and rested her long snout on Grace’s shoulder, nuzzling her neck. She stayed that way all the way home.
A few months later, Grace and her now adult son, along with Sophie and everything she owned, were moving to Montana. The moving van was gone and they just had to load themselves and their traveling gear into the car. That morning, Sophie was hit and killed by a logging truck on a dirt road near the house. Stiff upper lip.
By the time we moved into the B&B, Grace had been without a dog for longer than any other time in her adult life, and she was determined that our B&B would have a resident dog. A collie would freak out with all the comings and goings of all those strangers, so that was off the table. So she contacted the Golden Rescue Society of Montana, and we started visiting dogs. She rejected the first, second, third, and fourth dogs. I was getting a little tired of the search, especially since all four of those dogs seemed fine to me.
“They were wrong,” said Grace. “I can’t explain why, but I know it. And I’ll know when we find one that’s right.”
The next one was a stray, now staying with a foster mom, a woman who cared for dogs deemed to be unsuitable for the pound. This one, they decided, was too sweet to be thrown in with a bunch of rough street dogs. When we arrived, she met us in the yard, with no sign of the dog. After some brief small talk, she started asking questions, and we realized we were being interviewed.
She eventually explained that this dog had been adopted once before, a few months earlier. She, the foster mom, had missed her so much, she decided to drop by her new home. When she got there, the new owner was drunk on her butt, and the dog was locked in a room with no food or water. The foster mom took her on the spot, and now refused to let her go to any home until she was satisfied they were worthy.
“She’s terrified of brooms now,” she said. “She wasn’t that way before.”
Apparently, we passed the first test, and she brought the dog out to meet us. Without hesitation, she came straight to me, sat at my feet, and look into my eyes like I was the center of her universe.
She joined us in our new adventure. We named her Annie, as in Little Orphan Annie, or maybe Anna Montana. She was middle aged, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and already showing some white on her muzzle. She had been found about 30 miles away, in the forest on the other side of the mountains. She had obviously been loved and well raised. She had impeccable manners and was a perfect addition to our family and business. The only thing was, every time the door opened, she looked up with such hope, and when it wasn’t her real family, she was so sad.
One of my favorite Annie stories involved a family of five who booked two nights at the inn. They entered with comical commotion, kids full of energy after a long drive. Then the youngest started screaming and jumped into a fetal position on the couch, still screaming.
“It’s the dog,” shouted the mom as she wrapped herself around her son.
We put Annie in the back, all the while apologizing, although we didn’t know what was going on. It turned out the boy was autistic and had had a deathly fear of dogs since he was a toddler.
We promised to keep Annie out of sight, but the parents both insisted that she not be banished, and the two other kids were thrilled to meet her. So the first evening, those two rolled on the floor with Annie like puppies, while their younger brother stayed in their bedroom with his mom. The second evening, the whole family sat in our parlor so the two older kids could play with Annie, while the younger sat safely sandwiched between Mom and Dad on the couch, clearly entranced. At one point, his sister invited him to touch the dog. He squealed and squirmed, but smiled, too. The girl brought Annie close, and, with Mom’s help, he reached out a hand. Annie moved to sniff it and the boy shrieked and snatched his hand back, but then began to laugh.
The family had to leave the next morning. As always, Annie sat on her designated spot away from the table while we all ate together. After breakfast, Mom and Dad schlepped suitcases down the stairs and out to the car while the two kids hugged and kissed Annie and the boy sat alone on the couch, watching. When it was finally time to go, we gave the older two dog treats to feed to Annie, which thrilled everybody, especially Annie.
And then Mom said, with disbelief in her voice, “He wants to give her one, too.”
She dropped to her knees, her arms wrapped protectively around him as he stretched his arm out as far as he could. Annie, always the lady, accepted the biscuit gently and stood quietly while the boy rested his hand on her head.
Mom looked at me, cheeks wet with tears, and said, “You have no idea.”
Annie was as much a part of the B&B as either Grace or I. We were a team, providing a very special service to our guests. We were lovers in love who, with our faithful dog, lived the dream life in the Rocky Mountains, and we invited every guest who secretly, or not so secretly, shared that dream to join us for a day or two. That kind of bliss is contagious.
We adopted Little Orphan Annie in March. About a year and a half later, in early fall, we took a walk to the post office. Ours was the first business on the east end of town, and the post office was the last one on the west end. In most towns, from one end to the other would be too far to walk, but here it was four blocks along the only paved street in town. On the way back, we passed right by the front of the high school. (Go Panthers!) The door burst open and a young man shouted, “Amber?”
Annie was on him like white on rice. Jumping, kissing, barking, crying, she didn’t know what to do with herself, and he was just as bad.
“Where did you find my dog,” he called out to us.
Grace turned pure Mama Bear. “She’s not your dog! She’s our dog! She’s not your dog! She’s OUR dog!”
Grace, who had taught high school English for 25 years, had no problem taking charge of the situation. “Get back to class! We’ll talk to your parents tonight.” She put the leash on Annie and we walked home.
First she raged. “She’s OUR dog! They can’t take her! They lost her! We found her! She’s OUR dog!” Then she went to bed, where she cried for hours. By the time Kelli showed up that afternoon, Grace reluctantly came out of the bedroom to talk. Grace spoke first.
“Of course you can have her back. She’s your dog and you had her for years. She misses you guys every day.”
And then Kelli said the most wonderful thing. “We miss her, too, and we want her back, but she’s your dog, too. We can’t just take her away. So I was wondering… would you consider sharing her?”
“You mean like joint custody?”
“Something like that. Mike and I leave for work early, and Rebecca is away at college. She’d be home alone all day. James goes right by your front door for school. He could drop her off at 8 and I could pick her up around 6 or 7. We could trade off weekends.”
So our Annie and their Amber became Amber-Annie, the timeshare dog.
Almost two years earlier, as best as they could figure, the propane delivery guy hadn’t latched the gate. She had slipped out and wandered into the forest. Lost, she must have wandered for days. However she got there, she had been found 20 miles away from her home, with no way to trace her back to there. Mike and Kelli had checked all the animal shelters and put up signs, but she wasn’t put into a shelter, and her foster home was 30 miles away. No one who saw her ever saw the signs. She was first adopted by an abusive alcoholic, but was saved by her foster mom who missed her, and was then adopted by Grace and me, and we loved her, as did every guest who walked through the door. And what are the chances that, after all her travels through the mountains and then to another city, what are the chances that she would be adopted by someone who lived a half mile from her original home?
It took over a year for circumstances to work out, but they were bound to spot her eventually. Amber had first met James when she was a tiny pup, and so was he. They had grown up together, but he had given up on ever seeing her again, though she never seemed to lose hope, and now they were reunited. Every school day James would swing open our front door and Annie would come bounding in, ecstatic to see us. Grace had discovered that James had to get himself up and to school each day, so, like any kid would, he skipped breakfast. Now that she knew, everyday Grace had a hot breakfast sandwich wrapped in foil waiting for him, which he gratefully grabbed as he raced to beat the first bell. And every evening Mike or Kelli would swing the door open and Amber would go bounding out, ecstatic to see them.
When Amber-Annie got cancer, we agreed she should be put down when she was living in pain. Her other family took her for one last camping trip, and she played in the creek and ate bacon. Shortly after that, she stopped eating, and could hardly walk. Grace and I had the honor of sharing her final moments. Rest in peace Amber-Annie, the luckiest dog in the world. Get the bunny!
