Meet Bertie!
She’s our new 25-pound, 4ish-month-old some-mix-of-hunting-breed pup from Mississippi.
She has our hearts.
Missing Flossie
When our beloved Flossie crossed the rainbow bridge in March 2024, I couldn’t imagine having another dog. The absence of her presence hung
heavy over our house. We kept Flossie’s dog bed, her den blanket, her leash and
her bowls in their places. It made her feel closer.
Eventually, as grief will do, the daily pain softened a bit as
I kept seeing little reminders why having a dog in the house just makes things
better. Recently, I came up on the line from the lovely essay by playwright Eugene
O’Neill in memory of his beloved dog, Blemie, written in the form of the dog’s
last will and testament.
“One last request I earnestly make. I have heard my
Mistress say, 'When Blemie dies we must never have another dog. I love him so
much I could never love another one.'
Now I would ask her, for love of me, to have another. It would be a poor
tribute to my memory never to have a dog again. What I would like to feel is
that, having once had me in the family, now she cannot live without a dog!”
No truer words!
When David and I decided it may be time to get “re-dogged,”
we weren’t in a hurry. We knew the right dog would find its way to us at the
right time. I put out feelers to friends saying we’d be interested if anyone
heard of a “mature” Golden needing a home.
But dog Karma had other plans.
Finding Bertie
In early July, our niece Katie in Mississippi FaceTimed us one evening. She had found a stray black puppy near her home. This pup had ears that reminded us of the Flying Nun’s wings (young people look it up – great sitcom from the early 70s).
Katie and her family checked in with us daily with reports
on the dog. The pup was loving, smart and sweet. They decided to call her
Bertie named after Sally Fields’ flying nun character, Bertrille. I was convinced Bertie had found a place in Katie’s
family with her husband, their two dogs and 7-year-old daughter.
But eventually, Katie said they just couldn’t have a third dog,
and she’d found a no-kill shelter that would help Bertie find a new home. It didn’t
take long for us to come to the decision that this right dog had found us.
Thanks to a Facebook post I made asking Mississippi friends
if they knew of anyone driving through Atlanta that week-end, an angel of a
friend-of-a-friend volunteered to pick up the pup and meet me in Atlanta. Bertie
took a four-state “freedom ride” that included the hand-off in the parking lot
of a random gas station near Atlanta. Bertie quietly snored the whole four-hour
trip home.
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| Last leg of Bertie's "freedom ride" from MS to SC |
Her first night on Medway Road went amazingly well. She sniffed and zoomed around the house. Her high energy felt like she demonstrating she was all in with her new life. It sure felt good to have a dog to walk around the block in the evening - a long-time ritual we’d enjoyed with all of our dogs.
I quickly realized how much I’d missed that sound of the food scoop filling the dog bowl or the whooshing sound of the doggie bags tied to the leash. I remembered how much I love that cold nose nuzzle when I'm sitting on the floor to tie my shoes or a dog’s heavy head snoozing in my lap.
We immediately saw Bertie is smart and loves her people. She
could sit and was pretty well house trained. She quickly demonstrated just how smart when she figured out she could escape the back yard by squeezing through the gate slats
(fortunately quickly caught by a sweet dog-loving neighbor). Our back fence for
now brings up visions of Sanford and Son with chairs, recycle bins and random
flower pots pushed against the fence until she outgrows the ability to squeeze
through the slats.
Bertie’s first foray into the overgrowth in the backyard turned up three tennis balls and two lacrosse balls that must have made their way into the yard from the back-door neighbors’ boys. She does love to fetch – something none of our other dogs had an interest in.
Bertie is hilarious – she chases flies with the same
ferocity as she has for chasing the lake ducks. She hasn’t met a stranger. Her ears
are her facial expressions constantly telling us she’s curious and ready for
the next adventure. She mischievously hides her toys then joyfully finds them. She’s
ready to tree her first squirrel.
While I assumed Bertie would need some time to assimilate to her new life, she quickly fell into our routines - which aren't really all that regular.
We started the business of socializing this very friendly pup immediately. In her first week alone, she spent hours on the boat enjoying the lake, sat quietly under my chair at two restaurants, tagged along to one of my speaker training sessions (this was on the day she escaped and I realized I couldn’t leave her at home alone), figured out how to break out of the barricades we’d set up in the laundry room (crate training now underway), went to the farmers market, made two trips to the pet store, practiced being my office "shop dog," and behaved well at her first vet visit.
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| Bertie was the well-behaved shop dog for the day. |
Our dogs do make our hearts bigger giving us room to both remember
the ones we’ve lost and fill our hearts with the ones we’ve got. Bertie is now using the same dog bowl that Beaufort, Dixie and Flossie used (made with love by niece Katie in 2000). Bertie sleeps in Flossie's dog bed and cuddles up in Dixie's dog blanket. The gift of a dog lives on!
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| In memory of the dogs who came before! |
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