Sunday, July 04, 2004
Memories of Annie and Dinah
In 1983 Barbara and I moved into our house in North Vancouver and within a few months we went in search of the dog of her dreams, a Dachshund. Somehow we learned that a Victoria breeder was "burdened" with a standard red female pup, beautifully bred but too short in the body to be of show quality. He had been trucking her around to dog shows with her more valuable siblings and we caught up with him at a show at the North Shore Winter Club. Twenty minutes later she was in our arms, trembling and apprehensive, free from the dismal atmosphere of confinement.
We named her Annie.
On Annie's first night we put our innocent looking darling into a comfortable cage in the kitchen, covered it up, shut the door, and tiptoed off to bed. Within minutes we were shocked rigid by the loudest and most maniacal yodelling we had ever heard. My long experience with the placid Labrador breed came in handy and I assured Barbara that the ruckus would soon stop. It didn't and it got louder and louder. We surrendered and brought Annie and her cage into our bedroom. She promptly went to sleep. We remained tense and in shock, whispering assurances to each other and listening to gentle snores coming from the cage.
Annie liked a tug of war and so I often got down on the carpet with her and dragged her back and forth while she pulled and tugged like a ferocious bulldog. But Barbara had a different approach: she had a special knack in tying up old socks for Annie; and when she sat on the carpet and tantalized Annie, the little Tasmanian Devil would go crazy chasing after the sock -- through Barbara's legs and around and around until she sank her teeth into it. Having won the game Annie often would give the old sock a shake and sometimes throw it in the air and try to catch it.
From her first day Annie loved to go out into our back yard. If I was raking up cones from our fir trees she chased after them; and the moment I began to shovel soil or dig up anything she would be jump in and start digging with me. When I threw dirt to one side and sometimes on her she would yip,yap and dig deeper. When the yard was quiet Annie showed another side, going about checking and sniffing everything.
When Annie was nicely settled with us we presented her with an odd companion -- a very large female Labrador. Dinah took up residence on our closed-in back porch giving her the run of the yard and sundeck.
One of Annie's obsessions was burying bones. I remember her going off, ever so carefully, constantly checking to see if she was being followed, searching back and forth until she found the perfect hideaway. After digging a hole and lowering the bone into it, Annie backfilled soil by pushing and tamping with her nose. Last, a final look about to see if she had been watched and a jaunty walk away from the site, all the while oblivious to the fact that her nose was covered with dirt. When Dinah joined the family she exhibited the same bone-burying techniques. But Dinah devised a scheme of her own that developed from her ability to chew through a bone more quickly than Annie. Once done she would stand watching Annie's routine and as Annie walked blissfully away Dinah would slip in behind her and dig up the bone.
Annie went through many phases, they were unpredictable, often amusing and generally inexplicable. From Annie's point of view sleep habits and bed location had to be flexible. At first we gave her no choice by making her sleep in a dog cage in the kitchen but she responded by deciding where it would be placed. After a few months she decided to reject confinement in favour of a loveseat in our living room. We should have seen this coming because Annie had cleverly commandeered our living room loveseat as a perfect observation point from which she could look out our front window and see everything that passed by. Since it was equipped with arms at the exact level of her chin she could doze off between any action on the street. And when the moment suited her it became her bed. Later in life when she experienced a weakening in her back legs Annie accepted a floor bed of comforters and blankets withholding final approval through a couple of moves until we got it right. Then her dachshund heritage came to the fore and she became a burrower. It was also her way of telling us -- "Lights out folks, I'm going to bed now."
I have a vivid picture in my mind of Annie ending some of her exuberant runs around the house with a jump onto her floor bed. She loved to do that and also to roll over on her back, eyes shining, paws bent, waiting to have her stomach rubbed.
As might be expected Annie grew up a little overweight, but by a stroke of good fortune a chance comment by one of our friends turned things around. "I see Annie is putting on some weight," he said. Coming from a dacshund man this was an intimation of neglect, and since I had been hearing the same from our vet, Dr. Lilley, I thought "that's it no more house dogging for Annie."
It was crisis time and also time for a walk with Dinah into the wild and bushy heaven of Mackay Creek. I immediately conscriped Annie. Up Dudley Street hill we went, crossing Sunnycrest Drive toward a thicket of Laurel that concealed the trail entrance. Annie showed no enthusiasm as a dragooned labrador and all I could think about was the belief that everyone had expressed: this short-legged house pet would recoil in horror at the sight of dense bush and trees. If she did I was going to carry her down and make it a forced march! We ducked through the opening in a thicket of Laurel and Annie got a look at the creek, 100 feet below. Right before our eyes she was transformed into a bush dog. Without a backward glance Annie headed down the steep, winding trail, beginning the first of a thousand walks in our heavenly forest.
Annie's happy times on the banks of Mackay Creek were interspersed with scary times. A dumb/scary one was a headlong rush she made for a golden lab and a German shepherd. At full speed Annie rushed ahead of us and out of sight to get at them, yapping and growling. Seconds later we heard her yelping. Back she came, bleeding from a bite to one of her perfect ears. She was cowed but unrepentant, and her reward was a trip to the vet for stitches.
A most frightening incident happened during the occupation of the creek by a family of coyotes. I had just finished our usual walk and was halfway up the zigzag trail to Sunnycrest when I looked back to see if the dawdler dachshund was keeping up. What I saw stunned me: a large, healthy coyote standing 20 feet below me, motionless, staring straight ahead. I couldn't see Annie because she was hidden by overhanging ferns on the top side of the first lateral switchback. The coyote was within four feet of her. Dinah caught sight of the coyote and went hellbent after it and I picked up Annie and chased after Dinah. Brazenly, the crafty wolf kept just out of range knowing that we would soon tire and give up. Annie never realized how close she came to being dinner for the coyote family.
Annie always liked to run ahead and on one occasion she attacted the attention of a large owl. It swooped out of the treetops and dove toward her, veering off when only a few feet away. I can imagine the owl's thoughts: "looks like a fat rabbit, barks like a dog -- I'm outta here."
One day in that same part of the ravine I lost Annie. She was still young and I made the mistake of thinking she would act like most dogs and answer my calls. With Dinah at my side I scurried back and forth, calling and whistling. It seemed as though a half hour had passed and I was sure I had lost her. How could I explain this to Barbara? I was devastated. Then I chanced upon her sitting quite composed in her invisible fashion, watching the show I was putting on.
One of the funniest of Annie's creek capers involved an intrepid Airedale that ventured into the bush by itself. As we came to a log bridge just above Annie's swimming hole we met this handsome dog and immediately Dinah began racing around with it just for the sheer physical joy that dogs have in them. But Annie was not amused and she started to bark and snarl at them. The Airedale must have noticed this typical dachshund lack of enthusiasm and since the run was coming to an end he veered toward us at full tilt to thumb his nose at Annie. Annie took off, her legs a blur, calculating a tight angle of interception that would give her one life-ending bite to his hindquarters. But she hadn't factored in the Airedale's afterburner. As Annie hurtled into the air, all teeth and venom, he gave it a burst and she just missed, ending up in a 360-degree roll with not even a patch of Airedale fur for her effort. One happy and amused Airedale trotted out of sight.
Not funny in the same way as the Airedale pursuit, but still great comedy, was the day we surprised a coyote. We three dogs were mooching along on a warm spring day, the bush in full leaf concealing our movement and the murmur of the creek muffling the sound of our passage. Just as we came around a sharp turn at Annie's swimming hole we saw a coyote looking the wrong way, hunched over relieving himself. Dinah was off like a shot and got within a few yards of the coyote before he saw her. Frantic to escape, the coyote tore into dense bush with Dinah baying and crashing along on his tail. They were out of sight headed for the inner trail and the racket had Annie transfixed and me thinking "damn, how'll I be able to catch up to Dinah." Only seconds passed when the sounds of the chase made it clear that they were coming back straight toward us. Swish, the coyote shot out of the dense bush running lightning quick past Annie, no more than a foot from her, splashing across the creek into even denser bush. I looked at Annie and she was more stunned than me, although I'm sure she knew how close she came to bagging a coyote. Then Dinah showed up, breathing heavily, gasping "Where did he go? Where did he go?"
Another unpredictable and frightening coyote encounter occurred as we were walking on the west side of MacKay Creek near the pipeline trail. It was a summer day, the creek was murmuring, the wind was soughing in the treetops. Suddenly Dinah raced up the steep bank struggling over logs and through bush in an attempt to run down a coyote. In full cry she disappeared onto the ridge and moments later I heard the loudest and wildest barking and yelping -- it had to be a battle between Dinah and the whole coyote family.
Scooping up Annie I began clambering over logs, tripping and stumbling over rough terrain until I reached the top. The furious sound of fighting had ended and Dinah was tracking along about 100 feet behind a coyote on the downslope to the creek. After a few frantic calls Dinah stopped and waited for us. Moments later we reached the trail and met Tom Bell. Hearing the frantic howls he concluded that the coyotes were killing a dog, and had rushed to rescue it. We speculated that the coyote was luring Dinah away from her den and litter. But Annie, still wild-eyed and gripped by the vicarious thrill of a chase, was sure that Dinah had killed a coyote.
Every dog has a fish story. In the late fall coho struggle up Mackay Creek to spawn in gravel beds just below Handsworth bridge. Sometimes a spent coho would drift back to Annie's swimming hole and come to rest in plain view. Annie's moment came when I glanced into a shallow end of the pool and saw a well-preserved coho, shiny as a silver dollar, close to the edge in about six inches of water. I called Dinah over and she was quick to check it out but would not reach into the water to retrieve it. As Dinah walked away Annie went straight into the pool. She ducked her head under water and came up with the salmon. Back on the sand she secured it with one paw and began chewing away. Over Annie's righteous outrage I took it from her, assuring her that with a little exagerration she had the best fish tale any dog ever had.
When Annie was quite young she became an accidental water dog. It happened just across from a lone Sitka spruce growing on the bank of the creek just a short distance from Annie's swimming hole. Decades ago a tree had fallen across the creek, it's trunk creating a little waterfall. When the creek was low the log was exposed and I often walked down it to stand midstream, always avoiding the slippery partially-submerged part. On Annie's baptismal day she decided to walk the log, so to speak, but being so full of pride she took one step too many and in a blink she flipped into about two feet of water. When she surfaced it was swim or die. Having earned her swimming cap Annie began to mimic Labrador Dinah by venturing into the water to retrieve her own sticks. Her gold medal performance was unexpected and something I will never forget. The sun was shining into her pool, the water was deep but quite still, and while we stood agape Annie walked straight in and, with her tail rising out of the water, began swimming in easy circles. When satisfied that we had a full measure of her achievement she came out to a well-deserved petting.
Quite often I would to stop and sit with Annie and Dinah so that we could enjoy the serenity of our bit of wilderness. The best spot was on the east ridge that ends where Emsley Creek flows into MacKay Creek. Under a canopy of Douglas fir and hemlock, sitting in silence, looking down into a wide basin, together we enjoyed the bliss of muffled sounds of wind and burbling water.
Annie and Dinah -- always remembered.
Wallace Gilby Craig - www.realjustice.ca - July 14, 2004
We named her Annie.
On Annie's first night we put our innocent looking darling into a comfortable cage in the kitchen, covered it up, shut the door, and tiptoed off to bed. Within minutes we were shocked rigid by the loudest and most maniacal yodelling we had ever heard. My long experience with the placid Labrador breed came in handy and I assured Barbara that the ruckus would soon stop. It didn't and it got louder and louder. We surrendered and brought Annie and her cage into our bedroom. She promptly went to sleep. We remained tense and in shock, whispering assurances to each other and listening to gentle snores coming from the cage.
Annie liked a tug of war and so I often got down on the carpet with her and dragged her back and forth while she pulled and tugged like a ferocious bulldog. But Barbara had a different approach: she had a special knack in tying up old socks for Annie; and when she sat on the carpet and tantalized Annie, the little Tasmanian Devil would go crazy chasing after the sock -- through Barbara's legs and around and around until she sank her teeth into it. Having won the game Annie often would give the old sock a shake and sometimes throw it in the air and try to catch it.
From her first day Annie loved to go out into our back yard. If I was raking up cones from our fir trees she chased after them; and the moment I began to shovel soil or dig up anything she would be jump in and start digging with me. When I threw dirt to one side and sometimes on her she would yip,yap and dig deeper. When the yard was quiet Annie showed another side, going about checking and sniffing everything.
When Annie was nicely settled with us we presented her with an odd companion -- a very large female Labrador. Dinah took up residence on our closed-in back porch giving her the run of the yard and sundeck.
One of Annie's obsessions was burying bones. I remember her going off, ever so carefully, constantly checking to see if she was being followed, searching back and forth until she found the perfect hideaway. After digging a hole and lowering the bone into it, Annie backfilled soil by pushing and tamping with her nose. Last, a final look about to see if she had been watched and a jaunty walk away from the site, all the while oblivious to the fact that her nose was covered with dirt. When Dinah joined the family she exhibited the same bone-burying techniques. But Dinah devised a scheme of her own that developed from her ability to chew through a bone more quickly than Annie. Once done she would stand watching Annie's routine and as Annie walked blissfully away Dinah would slip in behind her and dig up the bone.
Annie went through many phases, they were unpredictable, often amusing and generally inexplicable. From Annie's point of view sleep habits and bed location had to be flexible. At first we gave her no choice by making her sleep in a dog cage in the kitchen but she responded by deciding where it would be placed. After a few months she decided to reject confinement in favour of a loveseat in our living room. We should have seen this coming because Annie had cleverly commandeered our living room loveseat as a perfect observation point from which she could look out our front window and see everything that passed by. Since it was equipped with arms at the exact level of her chin she could doze off between any action on the street. And when the moment suited her it became her bed. Later in life when she experienced a weakening in her back legs Annie accepted a floor bed of comforters and blankets withholding final approval through a couple of moves until we got it right. Then her dachshund heritage came to the fore and she became a burrower. It was also her way of telling us -- "Lights out folks, I'm going to bed now."
I have a vivid picture in my mind of Annie ending some of her exuberant runs around the house with a jump onto her floor bed. She loved to do that and also to roll over on her back, eyes shining, paws bent, waiting to have her stomach rubbed.
As might be expected Annie grew up a little overweight, but by a stroke of good fortune a chance comment by one of our friends turned things around. "I see Annie is putting on some weight," he said. Coming from a dacshund man this was an intimation of neglect, and since I had been hearing the same from our vet, Dr. Lilley, I thought "that's it no more house dogging for Annie."
It was crisis time and also time for a walk with Dinah into the wild and bushy heaven of Mackay Creek. I immediately conscriped Annie. Up Dudley Street hill we went, crossing Sunnycrest Drive toward a thicket of Laurel that concealed the trail entrance. Annie showed no enthusiasm as a dragooned labrador and all I could think about was the belief that everyone had expressed: this short-legged house pet would recoil in horror at the sight of dense bush and trees. If she did I was going to carry her down and make it a forced march! We ducked through the opening in a thicket of Laurel and Annie got a look at the creek, 100 feet below. Right before our eyes she was transformed into a bush dog. Without a backward glance Annie headed down the steep, winding trail, beginning the first of a thousand walks in our heavenly forest.
Annie's happy times on the banks of Mackay Creek were interspersed with scary times. A dumb/scary one was a headlong rush she made for a golden lab and a German shepherd. At full speed Annie rushed ahead of us and out of sight to get at them, yapping and growling. Seconds later we heard her yelping. Back she came, bleeding from a bite to one of her perfect ears. She was cowed but unrepentant, and her reward was a trip to the vet for stitches.
A most frightening incident happened during the occupation of the creek by a family of coyotes. I had just finished our usual walk and was halfway up the zigzag trail to Sunnycrest when I looked back to see if the dawdler dachshund was keeping up. What I saw stunned me: a large, healthy coyote standing 20 feet below me, motionless, staring straight ahead. I couldn't see Annie because she was hidden by overhanging ferns on the top side of the first lateral switchback. The coyote was within four feet of her. Dinah caught sight of the coyote and went hellbent after it and I picked up Annie and chased after Dinah. Brazenly, the crafty wolf kept just out of range knowing that we would soon tire and give up. Annie never realized how close she came to being dinner for the coyote family.
Annie always liked to run ahead and on one occasion she attacted the attention of a large owl. It swooped out of the treetops and dove toward her, veering off when only a few feet away. I can imagine the owl's thoughts: "looks like a fat rabbit, barks like a dog -- I'm outta here."
One day in that same part of the ravine I lost Annie. She was still young and I made the mistake of thinking she would act like most dogs and answer my calls. With Dinah at my side I scurried back and forth, calling and whistling. It seemed as though a half hour had passed and I was sure I had lost her. How could I explain this to Barbara? I was devastated. Then I chanced upon her sitting quite composed in her invisible fashion, watching the show I was putting on.
One of the funniest of Annie's creek capers involved an intrepid Airedale that ventured into the bush by itself. As we came to a log bridge just above Annie's swimming hole we met this handsome dog and immediately Dinah began racing around with it just for the sheer physical joy that dogs have in them. But Annie was not amused and she started to bark and snarl at them. The Airedale must have noticed this typical dachshund lack of enthusiasm and since the run was coming to an end he veered toward us at full tilt to thumb his nose at Annie. Annie took off, her legs a blur, calculating a tight angle of interception that would give her one life-ending bite to his hindquarters. But she hadn't factored in the Airedale's afterburner. As Annie hurtled into the air, all teeth and venom, he gave it a burst and she just missed, ending up in a 360-degree roll with not even a patch of Airedale fur for her effort. One happy and amused Airedale trotted out of sight.
Not funny in the same way as the Airedale pursuit, but still great comedy, was the day we surprised a coyote. We three dogs were mooching along on a warm spring day, the bush in full leaf concealing our movement and the murmur of the creek muffling the sound of our passage. Just as we came around a sharp turn at Annie's swimming hole we saw a coyote looking the wrong way, hunched over relieving himself. Dinah was off like a shot and got within a few yards of the coyote before he saw her. Frantic to escape, the coyote tore into dense bush with Dinah baying and crashing along on his tail. They were out of sight headed for the inner trail and the racket had Annie transfixed and me thinking "damn, how'll I be able to catch up to Dinah." Only seconds passed when the sounds of the chase made it clear that they were coming back straight toward us. Swish, the coyote shot out of the dense bush running lightning quick past Annie, no more than a foot from her, splashing across the creek into even denser bush. I looked at Annie and she was more stunned than me, although I'm sure she knew how close she came to bagging a coyote. Then Dinah showed up, breathing heavily, gasping "Where did he go? Where did he go?"
Another unpredictable and frightening coyote encounter occurred as we were walking on the west side of MacKay Creek near the pipeline trail. It was a summer day, the creek was murmuring, the wind was soughing in the treetops. Suddenly Dinah raced up the steep bank struggling over logs and through bush in an attempt to run down a coyote. In full cry she disappeared onto the ridge and moments later I heard the loudest and wildest barking and yelping -- it had to be a battle between Dinah and the whole coyote family.
Scooping up Annie I began clambering over logs, tripping and stumbling over rough terrain until I reached the top. The furious sound of fighting had ended and Dinah was tracking along about 100 feet behind a coyote on the downslope to the creek. After a few frantic calls Dinah stopped and waited for us. Moments later we reached the trail and met Tom Bell. Hearing the frantic howls he concluded that the coyotes were killing a dog, and had rushed to rescue it. We speculated that the coyote was luring Dinah away from her den and litter. But Annie, still wild-eyed and gripped by the vicarious thrill of a chase, was sure that Dinah had killed a coyote.
Every dog has a fish story. In the late fall coho struggle up Mackay Creek to spawn in gravel beds just below Handsworth bridge. Sometimes a spent coho would drift back to Annie's swimming hole and come to rest in plain view. Annie's moment came when I glanced into a shallow end of the pool and saw a well-preserved coho, shiny as a silver dollar, close to the edge in about six inches of water. I called Dinah over and she was quick to check it out but would not reach into the water to retrieve it. As Dinah walked away Annie went straight into the pool. She ducked her head under water and came up with the salmon. Back on the sand she secured it with one paw and began chewing away. Over Annie's righteous outrage I took it from her, assuring her that with a little exagerration she had the best fish tale any dog ever had.
When Annie was quite young she became an accidental water dog. It happened just across from a lone Sitka spruce growing on the bank of the creek just a short distance from Annie's swimming hole. Decades ago a tree had fallen across the creek, it's trunk creating a little waterfall. When the creek was low the log was exposed and I often walked down it to stand midstream, always avoiding the slippery partially-submerged part. On Annie's baptismal day she decided to walk the log, so to speak, but being so full of pride she took one step too many and in a blink she flipped into about two feet of water. When she surfaced it was swim or die. Having earned her swimming cap Annie began to mimic Labrador Dinah by venturing into the water to retrieve her own sticks. Her gold medal performance was unexpected and something I will never forget. The sun was shining into her pool, the water was deep but quite still, and while we stood agape Annie walked straight in and, with her tail rising out of the water, began swimming in easy circles. When satisfied that we had a full measure of her achievement she came out to a well-deserved petting.
Quite often I would to stop and sit with Annie and Dinah so that we could enjoy the serenity of our bit of wilderness. The best spot was on the east ridge that ends where Emsley Creek flows into MacKay Creek. Under a canopy of Douglas fir and hemlock, sitting in silence, looking down into a wide basin, together we enjoyed the bliss of muffled sounds of wind and burbling water.
Annie and Dinah -- always remembered.
Wallace Gilby Craig - www.realjustice.ca - July 14, 2004
