Glade Ruffie
Hadaya
I remember that as a kid, I had always wanted to have a dog. A small one, though for a while my mom really wanted us to have a Golden Retriever, and I was totally fine with that. My dad was very against this idea though, so this stayed a dream for a long time.
The year I turned 13 my parents split up, and we moved to a little flat. I was pretty excited, because for the first time in my life I got my own room! I had not really thought about my dream of having a dog much, I guess it was pretty clear to me that now that we were living in a new situation, it would just have to wait. One day my mom got a phone call from her friend, telling her their family dog had just had puppies and she didn't know what to do. My mom only laughed and hung up. April Fools! Well, her friend called back, and swore that this was no joke.
A few weeks later they invited us over to look at the puppies. My mom had made it clear that we were not getting one, we were just visiting. Which was fair - we got to look at their litter of cats a few years earlier, and they had other animals too that I found really interesting! I remember that when we got there, we were greeted by my moms friend and her mom, who was holding a little light brown naked puppy, with a black face and a little white lightning bolt on his chest. He stuck out between his dark brown brothers who all had long fur, and I fell in love immediately.
He was always everyone's favorite, and was actually going to stay with the family. See, this was everything but a planned litter. The mother, a dachshund/terrier mix, was about 10 or 11 years old, adopted from a shelter years ago, and upon adoption they were told she was fixed. Since she was getting up there in age they had adopted another little dog, a confirmed mix of a Pekingese and a German Shepherd Dog, who was only 5 months old at the time of adoption. You can see how it came as a shock, then, that the supposedly fixed dog was pregnant all of a sudden, by a little guy they thought way too young to produce offspring yet. He actually had his neuter surgery scheduled already when the puppies were born.
Well, since you can already see where this story is going - when the puppies were 8 weeks old we picked up a little brown bundle. There was much discussion, but in the end the family decided that keeping a puppy was not the best thing to do, so I got to take my little Toby home! He was tiny, and snuggly, and such a cute little thing. From the first night on, he slept in bed right next to me, under the covers. He was a brave little pup, mastering traffic and city life he had not known before, and friendly to every living being we met. And a big destroyer of toys.
Growing up, Toby was a bit of a pain sometimes. He was completely my responsibility, I took care of the food, walks, training - you name it! He drove me to my limit constantly, it took him over half a year to become clean inside the house, and his recall was dodgy at best so he stayed on a leash for most of his earlier years. But eventually, we became a team. I guess every relationship takes work. It really helps that if the partner is adorable though! When he became older and more mature, he even learned to walk off leash, and he loved to learn new tricks and do a bit of obedience, though is most favorite thing was always laying in the sun - he would be the happiest dog if that was everything he did all day!.
One of our favorite things was hiking in the forest. I would come home from school, do my homework and then take Toby out for hours! His favorite toy ever, and the only one he never destroyed, was a squeaky plush giraffe he got when he was 6 years old. He loved carrying it around all day, to sun in the garden, cuddle on the couch and sleep in bed at night. We got to visit several countries together, and when he was 13 he finally got to see one of my favorite places in the world, the sea, a goal I had had for years. He never really liked water, but he enjoyed laying in the sun while I went swimming.
Toby has opened up the world of dogs for me, and for that I will forever be grateful to him. He showed me how passionate I am about dogs, and how much fun clicker training and dog sports are. And through him, I discovered my love of photography.
He will always be my little boy.
