A Dog Decision

I want to describe the circumstances of how Boomer entered into our life.

I’m a dog person. Our family had a long (and heartbreaking) line of dogs. Our first dog, JT, died of distemper within a week.

Our 2nd dog, also named JT, lasted a little longer than a year before we had to give him away (he bit somebody). At left is a picture of me and JT.

 

The next dog we got was Smokey. Smokey lasted a lot longer, but was killed by another dog. On the right is a picture of Smokey, me, and my sister Julie.   Smokey was a great family dog and we probably had him for four or five years.  After he died, we decided to get another dog and we found one that looked very similar to Smokey.  We named the dog Bibeau (after our cousins, who had the last name “Bibeau”).  Little did we know that Bibeau was pregnant at the time with five puppies.

One of those pups above was named Moose, because he was bigger than the rest and threw his weight around. He was a small Boston Terrier, and he was the one we decided to keep.

Moose was my high school dog. I had a good time with him, and he was something of a legend with my friends, who named him “Zeus”. He had a vertical leap of several feet, could pick the lock of his cage, and would attack any of my friends when they pretended to beat me up!

The thing I remember the most about Moose was how loyal he was to my father. He preferred my father to anyone else. Whenever my father sat down to watch TV Moose would jump up into his lap and lay down. I started to think to myself that I would really like to have my own dog someday that felt the same way about me. This was actually the beginning of the path that took us to Boomer. I wanted my own great family dog when I grew up.

I married a cat person. Katy had had cats her whole life. When we first got married Katy had a difficult time finding a job, and we decided to get a cat to keep her company. Chata joined the family in 1989 and lived with us for 10 years.

And then it was dog time. Katy was uncertain, she had never had a dog. I told her that I would take all of the responsibility. All of it. We had to wait several months before getting another animal, because Chata had been sick. During the summer of 2000, our family took a vacation out West for a Krebs family reunion. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast in Montana. Our bedrooms were in a separate building on the property; for meals we would walk up to the main house (where the owners lived).

The owners had two Golden Retrievers. Matthew (6) and Becky (8) loved playing with those dogs on our first night.

And when the kids woke up the next morning, both dogs were sitting outside the door waiting for them.

For the next few days, our whole family played a lot with those two dogs. They loved on our family. They loved to be around us. It was fantastic.

We even went on a horseback ride and our guide brought along her own dog (see our family picture below). The dog was a golden retriever!

And I said to Katy: “Let’s get a Golden Retriever”.