Most of you know that we have a couple of Corgis at our home. Gigi is my sweet, elderly girl. Wyn is the rowdy, chewy half-grown pup. But…we have a third.
Several years ago, this brown female bird dog just showed up on the property. She was sweet. She was hungry. She was quite leery of people, which made me think that someone hadn’t been very good to her. And she didn’t want to leave. We put her in the pen with our 3/4 wolf mix, Zevon…and thinking of Hank Hill’s cartoon dog, decided to call her Ladybird.
Over the years, Zevon and Ladybird mostly loved each other. Well, until they got into it over food scraps. Then Zevon would growl and snap at poor Bird, who would whine, and go get in the dog shed in the pen. They had a couple of litters of puppies. Seeing how prolific these two were together, we took care of that, too. They got along. Then, Zevon died last fall. Stuart found his, lying in a clump of grass. Ladybird seemed to be inconsolable.
Shortly after Zevon was gone, Ladybird showed us that she was lonely and needed some company, by tearing down the wooden gate to the pen. Figuring ‘what could it hurt?’, we allowed Bird to take charge of the yard. This was a suitable job for her, except for when chasing our barn cats. She was best at night, because she WOOFED at everything that came up on the property. This included other dogs, possums, raccoons, and coyotes. She showed us that she had a talent for keeping a coyote pack away, with that Big Voice of hers.
We’ve had a mild winter, except for some fairly cold nights recently. Still, Stuart fixed her a house by our back door, complete with blankets and a hot pad. She liked that just fine, until the husband had to be out of town for a couple of days. And that’s when the ‘scratching at the door’ began. It was cold. What’s one more critter? So I let Bird in. I swear I saw that dog smile as she gingerly climbed up onto the love seat and promptly went to sleep.
That’s been a couple of weeks ago. Ladybird has good house manners. She asks to go outside when she needs to. She and the Corgis get along. In fact, Ladybird plays with Wyn, which relieves Gigi, I do believe. She eats with them. During the day, if it isn’t cold or wet, she prowls her outdoor domain and comes in at dinnertime, and stays.
We honestly can’t put a year as to when Ladybird showed up at our house. Someone out there missed out on a very sweet, highly intelligent, and absolutely grateful canine. It’s their loss and our gain of a family member.
Bird has a white muzzle these days, so we know that she is definitely on the elderly side. Nothing is permanent. One of these mornings, she will have moved on across that bridge.
And that will be a very sad day for us.