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| Jody. |
Jody and Buffy were littermates and were born in the summer of 1980, probably around August 1, but I do not know the exact date. Their mother was Brownie, as were most of my dogs. I do not know who their father was.
Jody and Buffy came from a large litter. There were two other puppies who looked just like Jody. All three of them had white on their chests, little white paws and a white tip on their tails. Their bodies were all black with just a little brown on some of the edges. I remember seeing all three of them sitting in the middle of the street. They were so cute and I was so worried that a car would come whizzing by and wipe them all out.
By the time Jody came along I was really disgusted with my neighbors, because Danny and I already had three of their puppies turned dogs (Rocky, Duke and Duchess) and three more were getting big and running loose in the neighborhood (Junior, Daisy and Boog-A-Loo). Therefore, I really did not dote over how the puppies were doing. All I remember is that eventually there were three puppies, Jody and another of the puppies that looked like her and one other.
Then, on September 10, 1980, I came home from work to find the puppies obviously very ill. It had been a couple of days since I last saw the puppies and they had lost a lot of weight. Jody was standing over a pan of water I had put out for them. She was just standing there listless, almost lifeless. The other puppy that looked like her was nowhere to be found. The third puppy was laying all stretched out in the grass a few feet away. She, too, had no energy.
I took the two puppies into my house. I was able to carry them in one hand. I was having steak that night, so I cut off a little sliver and offered it to them. Neither of them would eat anything. They obviously were quite sick - a dog that will not eat raw meat is really really sick!!
The parvo virus was a fairly new virus at that time and I immediately thought that is what they had. The problem with parvo, as I understood it, is that it works very fast. A dog can appear in good health in the morning and be dead by the end of the day, or at least so I believed.
I called Danny and he came down to my house. We discussed it and I just could not let anything happen to them, even though I had my hands full with King, Rocky, Duke and Duchess. I told him that I intended to get them treated.
I then went to my neighbors house and told them I was taking them to the doctor. I asked them if they knew what happened to the third puppy. They claimed they did not know what happened to it, though I suspect it was already dead. If not, I am sure it died shortly thereafter.
My neighbors asked me to send them the bill for the treatment. I offered, instead, to pay to have their dog spayed, if they would go through one of the reduced cost programs. They said they would take care of it. They did not.
At any rate, I took the two puppies to an emergency clinic. They gave them antibiotics and filled them full of fluids. The puppies stayed all night at the clinic and when I picked them up they each had big bulges of fluids on each side of their bodies. Thankfully, they were still alive. I then took them to Dr. Cannon who kept them for a week or two.
The whole process cost about $400.00, as I recall, but to see those two little farts happy and playful again was well worth the expense. Needless to say I did not go back to my neighbor for the money and I did not give the puppies back to them.
Faced with the necessity of naming them, I noticed that one puppy had some light brown paws, as opposed to Jody's white paws. Their half brothers and sister (Rocky, Duke and Duchess) had paws that were reddish brown. The new puppy's paws were more a buff color, so I named her Buffy. Well, I am not a fan of TV and rarely saw that show with the kids named Jody and Buffy, but when I named the one dog Buffy, Jody seemed a natural for the other dog.
When I took the puppies in, Jody was actually the bigger of the two puppies. As they grew, Buffy became the larger dog. Jody did not get as big as most of her half-brothers and sisters. She got to about 35 or 40 pounds.
Both Jody and Buffy gave me great joy through the years. When they were young, they would chase each other all around the yard. Run, run, run! Play, play, play! Wrestle, wrestle, wrestle!
When I wonder what sort of intelligence dogs have, I frequently think of Jody and Buffy playing. At the time I had a fence in their yard between the house and the garage. It was a fence that I never really completed, because I bought the two houses north of my house and I no longer needed the fence. Jody and Buffy would chase each other around that fence. I know dogs must have deductive reasoning powers, because every now and then one of them would stop and go the other way. She must have been thinking that if she stopped the other one would come back around and she could catch her that way. This is "if-then" thinking. I see no other reason for their conduct.
When I took Jody and Buffy in, I also took in the three larger puppies that had been running loose in the neighborhood. They were Junior, Daisy and Boog-A-Loo. Jody and Buffy really seemed to like to play with Daisy and she tolerated them. The two puppies frequently put their whole heads in her mouth. It was really cute to watch the puppies and Daisy play.
One of Buffy’s habits deserves special note. When she was just a puppy she decided that she would not come in unless I came to her and gave her a little attention. Once she had her little pet, she would come in. This I was willing to do since she was rather shy and probably did not get as much attention as she should have when she was in the house. She died when she was 13, I believe. Thus, if you figure I went out and gave her a special little pet at least twice a day for 13 years, that is nearly 10,000 special pets in her life.
About their names! Yes, the 1960s CBS TV show Family Affair did inspire their names. The show featured Mr. French, Bill Davis and three children, including twins Jody and Buffy (a boy and a girl). Well anyway, my puppy had some buff markings on her legs - buff compared with the reddish brown markings on Rocky, Duchess and Duke. Thus, she became Buffy. Jody just seemed appropriate for the other puppy, so Jody it was. (Note: now if you really believe that a semi-intellectual nerd like me that seldom watches TV remembered all the above about the TV show, think again! All I remembered was that there was some show that had a couple of kids on it named Jody and Buffy. Internet searches for information saved the day! Okay, I remembered Mr. French too!)