Sport was born in Lochkatrine, Nova Scotia, in 1997. He was from the last litter of Australian shepherds mom and dad raised. As there were no plans to register the pups, they left their tails. For Sport, that tail grew into his crowning glory: big, fluffy, and an unfailing indicator of his mood.
Sport lived with my folks for the first four years of his life. During that time, he was expertly obedience trained by my mother and spent his youth frolicking in the country with the other dogs; including learning the hard way that chasing horses gets you kicked in the head.
Sport’s life changed forever in the Christmas of 2000. Shawn and I were home for Christmas and late one night after everyone else had gone to bed, Shawn was sitting in the kitchen and Sport, the unusually reserved Aussie, made his way over to say hello. It was love at first pat—for Shawn.
The very next day he told mom if he could have any dog at the house, he’d take Sport. My mom, who at that point, had a dozen dogs underfoot on any given day, said if we had a place to keep him, we could have him. When mom made this promise, she was thinking years down the road when we bought a house and if we still remembered.
We moved as soon as our lease was up in July. No more carefree downtown living for us, we were dog owners. It was off the relative boonies of Fenwick Street, off the Bay Road and on the wrong side of the Armdale Rotary. It was an adjustment for all of us, especially for country mouse Sport. The trying desperately to get back in the car with Bernard, my brother in law and dog deliverer, as he was leaving was a dead give away. For years afterwards, Bernard was the recipient of many a Sport stink-eyes.
My mom, understandably upset with losing such a beautiful dog, offered to come and get him if it didn’t work out. She said if Sport was happy, his tail was up. If his tail was down, he wasn’t. Well, his tail was definitely down for the first few days. The first obstacle to overcome on the path to getting that tail up was breaking his training. A rural dog has an acreage in which to do his business. Sport was trained not to go on his leash because having a dog crap in an obedience trial is highly disruptive. Having a sad little blue dog who looks like he’s going to bolt to Antigonish at any moment does not inspire off-leash levels of trust. Twenty short hours later, Sporty let go in the paved drive in front of the house. No lifted leg, and in those days, he’d try for the splits. There were rousing cheers and applause from Shawn, our friends Lori and Jay, and I believe the downstairs neighbour. For the first time, the tail went up.
From then on in, Sport was a bodily-function machine on walks. No tree or telephone pole was sacred. If he could make you crawl under a tree to collect his solid leavings, all the better. His obedience training took more hits, some intentionally, like enjoying the full length of a leash, and some were completely spontaneous, like his brief period of coffee-table thieving and his perpetual garbage plundering. The plundering was consistently followed by explosive diarrhea, but even a great dog has a hard time knowing what is good for them all the time.
In all other respects, Sport was the perfect dog. Never a flashy, in-your-face, Aussie, Sport was always the model of decorum. No game of fetch or stick, no slavish devotion to chew toys, Sport was just Sport: a constant companion and sounding board; never more than four feet away. In all of the photos taken at our house, you’d be hard pressed to find one without at least a part of Sport somewhere in the frame.
Sporty moved with us to our first house in the north end of Halifax. Even though he achieved off-leash (and high-tailed) privileges within a couple months of arrival, we all enjoyed the fenced back yard. It was while we were in the north end that Sporty gained a cousin, Geraldine’s German shepherd Charlie. An unlikely pair, a towering German shepherd and a little blue Aussie, the two became best friends and had many amazing adventures over the years, terrorizing parks, beaches, and Geraldine most of all.
The adventures continued when we moved to Dartmouth in 2004. There were camping trips and seaside getaways. Always one to be alongside, Sporty made it very clear that any bed but the one at home was to be shared by him. He made best of friends with the neighbours, especially with Roger, his walking and running cohort.
In 2010, our introverted Aussie was starting to slow down. As much as it pained us, we began succession planning. At the end of May, I brought Spartacus, an eight week old blue merle, home from the airport. For the next eight months, that growing puppy tormented Sport on a daily basis. It got worse as Spartacus got bigger, the pinnacle witnessing Sport drug across the floor by that fantastic tail of his. The vet assured me they would become best friends. We just wanted Sport to put the boots to the obnoxious puppy. At nine months, it happened. Suddenly Sport was the boss and Spartacus listened. All that time, Sporty was just waiting for Spartacus to grow up.
As time went on, we could no longer ignore the changes in our gentlemanly dog. I finally said to Shawn, it’s time and on Monday, August 27th, 15 years after he came into this world, we said goodbye to Sport. Our first dog, our beloved dog, and in the words of an old roommate, “the gold standard in dogs.”
No comments:
Post a Comment