I've had several, the latest (and longest) having been Laddie, a blond Cocker Spaniel. Laddie and I had a loving relationship but I raised him just like I raised my kids -- to think he had a mind of his own -- and he took full advantage of that. For a time, I had a number of Hispanic friends, and the story went that my dog's name was short for "Ladino", because they so often heard me snapping: "Laddie, no!" He got into everything. He got into my purse and tore up paper he found in it (so much for the grocery list). He was a wizard at yanking things off the kitchen counter (thawing meat, boxes of doughnuts, etc.), and woe betide you if you got up from the dinner table for any reason as when you turned back you were likely to find Laddie nimbly walking on your plate! Oh, I did indeed try discipline, but Laddie would plant himself on the floor, set his jaw rigidly and glare right back at me. And then proceed as if I'd said nothing at all.

Though I've had many breeds and dogs of no breed in particular, I think there is nothing like a Cocker Spaniel for presenting a picture of True Unbridled Joie de Vivre -- to watch Laddie run and play, laughing mouth open, ears sailing, eyes a-light, never failed to raise my spirits.

He had most likely been deaf for about 3 years before a vet discovered this and told me. Laddie read me so well that I hadn't an inkling he no longer could hear me. I took then to resting my neck on the top of his head when I talked to him so he could at least get the vibrations from my throat. His failing eyesight did not stop him in the least, and it was left to me to become his eyes after the day he ran off the lip of a culvert and fell two feet into grass (luckily)-- although he sprang up and took off undaunted, I came more slowly under the weight of the new responsibility.

He passed in his sleep a year ago April at the age of 16. We were away that weekend -- how strange, one of only two weekends in the whole year that we were not at home...I think he somehow chose the time, because he had shown no signs of illness.

And up until at least several months later, he was still guarding his food dish in the backyard, but that's another story entirely. All dogs go to Heaven unless they are On Watch.

BarbaraLynn