Hoofbeats, Hair Balls, and Three Dog Nights: Thirty Years of Pet Adventures

If I were to be asked to describe my story in a single word, that word would be “symbiosis,” the intimate living together of dissimilar organisms in a mutually beneficial relationship. This is the story of the symbiotic relationships between a married couple (the author and his wife) and our animals—dogs, cats, and, last but certainly in no way least, horses. All of the animals fulfilled many deep needs in us and we in them. We benefited each other. We cherished each other. We rescued one another. And I often ask myself: Did these creatures come into our lives because we needed them or did it only seem that way? And our animals and their people are definitely dissimilar organisms! As I daily remind myself, dogs and cats are NOT small, silent people in fur coats! Horses are NOT large, hoofed people in leather coats!

Let me name our animal companions now and, in the pages that follow, tell you all about them and how we all came to serve (and save) one another later.

First was Cuddles, a mostly white Cockapoo and a tiny rag mop of a dog, with whom Connie and I began our marriage in 1975.

Next came Gus, a platinum Poodle, who joined us when we moved from Delaware to California six months later. After Cuddles’ death nine years later, we added Duffy, a West Highland White Terrier from a pet store. When Gus died after twenty years with us, we found a black Scottish Terrier at a local animal shelter and named her Katie Scarlet (after the heroine in Gone with the Wind). Then my wife got a yen for a Himalayan cat and we bought a kitten and christened her Ana-purr-na, a.k.a. Purr. She is beautiful—with blue eyes and masses of long tawny hair. Four years ago, after twenty-three years of suburban existence, we moved to the country where we have three majestically scruffy acres of land that include a two-stall stable, a sanded arena, and an acre or so of pasture. But before we located a horse, we were convinced that we needed a “barn cat” to live in our hay room to discourage the mice as well as a “real dog” to wander our acreage.

A classified ad led me three miles from our home to a young man who was leaving for college and could not take his six-week-old Queensland Heeler puppy with him. The dog’s half-black and half-white face intrigued me and I bought her. We named her “Nehi”—not because of the chocolate soft drink of our childhood but because she was only “knee high to a grasshopper” then and because we expected her to be about “knee high” to us at maturity.

My wife’s cousin’s best friend, who is the local unofficial full-time animal rescuer, brought us a downtrodden, wounded, abused, and starved black cat with a cauliflower ear and shaved areas on her body where she had undergone recent surgeries. She had also survived a shooting attempt. I named her “Cat-tas-strophe,” “Tassy” for short. But she preferred “Barn Cat” or “Blackie” or even “BC.” Our plan was to have Tassy live in the tack room of our stable to deal with the field mice and restrict our expensive fuzz ball of a Himalayan to the house. Connie was sure that she was raising a lap cat of her own. After a few weeks of regular meals, Tassy fattened up so much that our vet and we were sure she was pregnant. Fearing that she would have kittens in some inaccessible place on the property such as under our deck, we kept her in the tack room 24/7. We made sure that she had plenty of food and water and that she was visited regularly. More weeks went by. No kittens. So we released her from confinement.

As Purr grew to adulthood, she decided that she is my cat and nobody else’s. She comes to me frequently every day for brushing and just to snuggle in my lap. Sometimes she sleeps on my pillow but usually, regardless of the weather, she spends the night outdoors, patrolling the grounds. Despite her pampered appearance, she is not an indoor cat. She prefers to slink around our front and back yards, hiding in the shrubs, and stalking birds.

Lest Connie feel rejected, she was adopted by Tassy, who accompanied her everywhere, indoors and out, and frequently used Connie as her personal furniture, although her favorite place was the back of the sofa where Connie read, watched TV, or reclined. Also, Tassy knew a magic trick that kept Connie amazed and amused. She did not follow Connie as much as she materialized a few feet ahead of her, no matter where on our property my wife went. And she was deadly to the mice. (Connie was glad to see the mouse population depleted but was upset by the fact that Tassy ate the creatures as soon as she dispatched them. Crunch, crunch, crunch!)

We had purchased our new home because of its equine accommodations—my wife had wanted a horse of her own since childhood. She sought a paint horse and a huge brown and white mare came up for sale in our town. It was advertised in our local all-ads newspaper and I was the first of more than twenty who phoned the day the notice appeared. This gave Connie first right of refusal, which she never considered. So Stormy became my wife’s horse.

A year later, as Connie was making slow but steady progress with the care and nurture of the BIG GIRL (her shoulders are higher than my wife is tall!) and was riding with some slight degree of confidence, I decided that I would like a horse of my own so that we could take trail rides together. Accompanied by an experienced horseman we knew from the paint horse organization, we looked at every horse that seemed suited to my needs in a three-county area. Sheer exhaustion prompted our friend to offer us a red roan and white paint gelding he had gotten in a trade. And so I bought a horse with the unwieldy name of “Sur-bourbon-on-the-rocks” and dubbed him “Ragtime Cow Horse Joe,” which was shortened to the simpler “Rags.” (Just try hailing a horse named “Sur-bourbon-on-the-rocks”—especially when one is an ordained minister who is a teetotaler!) Forty years ago, when my daughter Susan was about three, she sang incessantly and somewhat incorrectly about “Puff the Magic Shragon.” I remember the line, “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.” And even though any given pet will be there for a large fraction of one’s life, they are no more everlasting than little Jackie Paper, Puff’s playmate. After all, dogs and cats age at about seven times the rate of humans. While I was at work on this book, two of our beloved companions—Duffy and Tassy—died. Duffy was an old man of almost fourteen and Tassy of undetermined age. Connie decided that the remaining two dogs, one cat, and two horses were “more than enough,” but then we met Rizzi, a tricolor Queensland Heeler who had been found at the scene of a hellacious forest fire at an Indian reservation. And so our family changes . . . .

If I had to choose just one word to describe each animal, I would call him or her:

• Cuddles the dancer
• Gus the lover
• Duffy the protector
• Katie the obdurate
• Nehi the tireless
• Purr the empress
• Tassy the ubiquitous
• Stormy the mighty
• Rags the beloved
• Rizzi the charismatic