I should tell you a little about my dad. He was born in Kansas on December 11th, 1939. The youngest of four children. My grandfather moved the family to Utah while my dad was little to take a job working at Kennicott Copper’s plant as an electrician. He soon had enough money to buy a farm on the eastern side of the state in a region called the Uintah Basin. This farm of about 400 acres in rural eastern Utah is where my father grew up. They raised sheep, hay, and had horses and a few heads of cattle. He rode his horse to grade school, which doubled as a church house for those in the area. The school expelled him from high school and never went back and instead entered the workforce. 

Dad worked many jobs throughout his young adulthood, especially after meeting my mom. At the ages of 19 and 16, they got married and started having kids. The oldest was my sister Debbie, who recently passed away, then my brother Jim JR. They would have three more daughters, and after a long gap, one more son. Me.

My father helped construct the Flaming Gorge Dam and was one of the last people to travel through the valleys, gulches, and draws before they filled with water. He worked on the farm, harvesting the hay, caring for the cattle, and maintaining the equipment. In the late 60s, my grandparents were fortunate enough to have money coming in from mineral rights that they owned. They used the money to buy new equipment, pay off a new house. My father learned to use the equipment and learned its quirks.

Dad loved horses, old cars, hunting, and he loved to be out in the wilderness. And at 28, he broke his back while hunting near home. It crippled him for the rest of his life, but he kept right on working. Despite the pain, despite the anguish, he worked almost till the day he died in 1995. After he broke his back, no jobs would hire him, and so he did odd jobs, scrapping metal and cutting wood were two of the most common ones. 

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I came along in 1977; unexpected. Dad was mostly helping with the farm at that point and my siblings were all in high school or near highschool age. In fact, within a couple of years, my brother would marry and have his first kid on the way. So my oldest sisters and sister-in-law raised me as much as my mother did. 

We also had a dog. Or at least the family did. Wilbur was his name, and he was pretty amazing, at least what I remember of him was. Wilbur was a Boston Terrier and I can remember running and playing with that dog. Petting him (nicely) and cuddling with him. My memory is foggy about him, and I’m stretching back to my earliest memories. But the fact I can remember him, and that it was a positive experience left a deep impression on me and how I would come to view dogs. 

 I know that Wilbur died, but I don’t remember why or how and remember being very sad about his death though. His death seemed to happen around the same time as my grandfather’s death, but I do not know which death occurred first. I know that I didn’t quite understand what happened in either case. 

The pictures included are of my father with Wilbur, and though I’d like to think he was my dog, he was clearly my dad’s dog. Dad really loved that dog, and you can tell. This is the world I came into: loving parents, supportive and loving siblings, and a man that loved dogs as my father. 

Next, I’ll talk more about my father, and about one of the most amazing dogs I’ve ever known: One Gallon. 

Just a Dog: Introduction

I’ve loved dogs since I first realized what they were, four-legged loyal companions that were silly, dump, and just lovely creatures that were both protectors and friends. As I get older my love for them increases, to the point now where I feel the need to become more active in the pet community and make strides to both understand them better and volunteer my time to help them. My experience is my own, though similar to folks that live in rural areas no doubt. There’s something unpolished about the treatment of dogs in rural communities. Many people don’t give them the respect they deserve, though it depends on the person. 

This is the first of a series of essays about dogs, my dogs, and my family’s dogs through the years, and other dogs too. It’s also about my memories of my parents and my siblings. It’s going to be full of memories half-remember.  Full of love, guilt, sadness, and joy. It’s also a memorial to two of the best, most affectionate dogs I’ve ever owned, and it’s a catharsis for losing them. A way for me to carry on.

I’m not an expert on dogs. I know as much as a dog owner should, like what foods should and shouldn’t go into their wildly temperamental tummies. How to treat them when their hackles are up. I’ve learned the hard way how to handle fighting dogs. If I get something wrong, well, I’m not an expert, I’m using limited knowledge and perhaps haven’t come across the correct information. 

For a long time, I’d hear the maxim, “it’s sad, but remember it’s just a dog”, hence the title of this series of essays. To some folks, they are just dogs and don’t deserve consideration. But they aren’t just dogs to me, nor many people. It’s because they are dogs that I love so much. 

One more thing before I end this intro, as I progress through it you’ll see little mention of my mother owning dogs, growing up my siblings were out of the house and the dogs were my father’s or mine (or both making them family dogs). My mother claimed no dogs as her own. She rarely showed particular affection for many of the dogs. She told me once that she’d lost a pet (a cat; I believe) as a young girl and didn’t like the feeling and the grief that came from it. But you’ll see as we progress through the essays she grew attached to the dogs, despite her best efforts not too. And at the end of her life, she became remarkably tenderhearted. So while she’s never given ownership, she’s always there and helping to take care of the dogs, just as she took care of the family. 

This introduction is also a bit of an outline of what to expect in future installments. To begin with, I’m going to talk about my father and two dogs significant in his life, or at least as I saw it. Then I’m going to talk about my grandmother and the two dogs that she had while I was growing up. Then I’ll move onto the dogs that were family dogs, or my dogs until I left home. Through all of this, there will be stories of my sibling’s dogs, memories of growing up, and reflections of life here in the middle of nowhere Utah. This is going to be a long series, so I hope you’ll bear with me. The goal is to release an essay a week until, well, I’m finished. But this week I’m going to make an exception and you’ll get the first installment in a few days. I hope you enjoy it. 

She loved her parents, who preceded her in death. She loved all her siblings, and when they married,  their spouses. She loved her nieces and nephews and when they grew up and married and had kids; she loved them as too.  Most of all loved her children. She took great joy in them, in their interests, in their passions, in their wins, and their losses. She was protective, sometimes more than she should be. But it was always well-intentioned. She loved her babies, and that’s what they were to her; her babies.

But honestly, we were all her babies. She helped raise many of us. Aunt Debbie, Debbie, Dee-Bra! Grandma Debbie. So many of us grew up with her watching over us. Making sure we happy and safe. Being sad when we fought with each other or were mean. She had nieces and nephews at her house all the time, and she was happy to let them stay. When her siblings, or friends, needed to get away for the afternoon, or the evening, or the weekend, she was there at her door and her arms open wide.  She’d make sure you were full, comfortable, and safe. That’s who and what Debbie was.

Almost all of us have memories of staying at Debbie’s house. That stayed true even as we all grew up and had kids of our own. We knew we could count on her because she loved us, and she loved our children, and like when we were young she wanted us to be warm, content, happy and loved.

Love that is so freely and sincerely given has become rare. Debbie never seemed to run out. She had so much of it she seemed to burst sometimes. When you find somebody who has so much love and gives it out so freely, it never seems like it will run out.  

But that isn’t true. It does run out eventually. And when it does, you realize just how much love that person gave. Debbie gave a lot. More than almost everybody I know. Now that she’s gone we can all feel that gap in our hearts that was filled with her love. It makes us gasp for its absence. But breathe deep and remember her and the times you had talked to her, playing at her house, spending time with her and you’ll feel it again. And you’ll smile because the love is still there.