A Shep History

Sheppy came to live with me Christmas Day 2010. I was told he was 8 months old and half German Shepherd (mom) and half Siberian Husky (dad). I have seen neither in person.

The first time I saw Sheppy, he went by a different name. (A friend of mine shortened it to Sheppy and I knew it was right he has been called that ever since.) My high school friend and co-worker, Mark, owned him and I think he said that he came with the name “Shephard”. At the time he owned Sheppy, he was living with his girlfriend and they were renting a house together. (Living with Mark’s girlfriend. Not Sheppy’s girlfriend.) I drove him home from work one day and I spotted this scrawny blonde, almost platinum, dog lying in a hole by the house. When I got out of the car, he curiously came over to greet us. He wasn’t hyper or afraid but somewhere in-between. The moment I first saw him, I admired how beautiful he was and wished that he was mine. A feeling, I can honestly say, I have never felt before. (Yes, I have admired beautiful dogs before, but none that have ever made me think, “I wish I had you in my life so I could see you everyday.”)

When I first got him

A few weeks had gone by and Mark had increasingly mentioned that things were not working out in his relationship. My dad had passed away in the last few months, and we had room at my house, so my mom and I talked about it and we offered him a room temporarily. Not long after staying with us, Mark’s girlfriend started complaining about “Shephard”.

“He is a nuisance and if you don’t come and get him I am taking him to the pound!”

We worked out an agreement with my mom that “We would board him for 2 weeks. Just long enough for Mark to figure out all his stuff and move into the new place he was going to be renting in town.” Eventually that turned into 2 months. Eventually that turned into “Mark isn’t going to come and take Sheppy away, right? He is our dog now.”

Sheppy and Ginny are best friends

The second time I saw Shephard, was the first time I saw him in my home. I was sitting on the floor, playing video games with my back pressed up against the couch, when the front door opens and this dog waltzes in and walks directly to me and sits down on the floor. I started petting him and I remember him looking around the room as my mom and Mark talked. I was super thrilled to see him and couldn’t keep my eyes off of him. I don’t even think I paused the game I had been playing.

Boarding Sheppy came with conditions. First, he must be washed before he was allowed to stay in the house. Second, he had to have his shots updated and a vet check up. And lastly, he could stay no longer than 2 weeks.

Previously, I had washed dogs in the bathtub, but Shephard was a strange dog so I decided to wash him outside. Honestly, a lot of my life directly after my dad passing I don’t remember, so I don’t know exactly how washing him went but I remember being in shock when I first realized that his fur was not blonde/white but rather gold/red. I was shocked at how much dirt came off his fur from being left outside so much. It was like we found a new more beautiful dog underneath all the filth.

Shep was a very chill dog and didn’t seem very hyper active for a “puppy”. Mark gave us a bit of backstory, telling us that he came from a family who used to abuse him. I have no idea what they did to him but Shepherd remembered what they did. He remembered for a long time. (I will talk about his quirks because of horrible people in a few.)

I was warned when he arrived, that when Mark drove away or left the house, we needed to keep an eye on Shephard because he might try to run away. Apparently, it had happened a few times in the past because Shephard had been moved around a lot. (Possibly between multiple people.) He had separation anxiety and sure enough if Mark (and soon myself) left the house, he would chase us down the fence and start to dig once reaching the end of the line. My mom traced the fence line with large rocks and soon we discovered that calling him inside helped keep him from knowing we had left. His digging didn’t stop at just the fence line; random holes started popping up around the house. We soon learned that it was not “acting out” or a “boredom” behavior problem but a survival technique, likely learned from being left out in the heat. On hot days, most days in Arizona, he would dig a hole and lay in it to cool off. We scolded him for it but my mom designated one “safe zone” place he was allowed to dig and lay in. It was by/in my mom’s garden shaded by a large bush of some kind. That was a pretty quick behavioral fix. (When he gets too warm sometimes he starts to go back to digging but he doesn’t dig anymore.)

Some of the other random problems he had didn’t become fixed until I moved from Arizona to Oregon. Blue, Charley, and Zero, I highly believe, taught Sheppy how to be a real dog. They helped him get over his weird quirk of not drinking water in the house and helped him get over his fear of wood/tile flooring. While in AZ, it was a huge fear of mine that Sheppy would get sick while I was at work because he wouldn’t drink water until he was let outside. This is a problem because if he is in the house while I am at work he wont drink anything for about 9 hours or however long it took for me to get home. After seeing the other dogs drinking water in the house, he eventually got over it, but for two solid years he wouldn’t drink anything indoors.

The fear of wood and tile flooring was a bit tricky. In AZ, it was easy to deal with. He didn’t go in the kitchen, no biggie, and everthing else was carpet. Moving to Oregon, the house had wood in the lobby and the kitchen. The backdoor was through the kitchen, aka, long row of wood flooring. We used to have to lay our rugs from the stairs (My room was on the second floor) to the outdoors twice a day. Then eventually we removed a few of the rugs and he was soon okay. Watching the other dogs ,unfazed by the things he was afraid of, was a huge help I think.

Sheppy was very anti-social when we first got him. When we were in the living room he would lay behind the couch or in the other room. He found safety in quiet places away from anyone. If you were to pet him and accidently touch one of his ears he would cry out. It wasn’t even a yelp or a whine it was like a scream. It was terrifying and one of the most heartbreaking sounds you would hear. He didn’t snuggle. He didn’t get near your lap. He didn’t chase. He didn’t retrieve. He didn’t make a sound. Our neighbor came to me one day,

“You got a new dog!”

“Um… no we didn’t. My friends dog came over a couple days ago but that’s it..”

“No, I spotted him the other day sitting on the porch! That gold dog!”

“Sheppy? We have had him since Christmas” *it is April*

Sheppy is a totally different dog than he used to be. He has survived horrible people, a rattlesnake bite under his jaw, a move from Arizona to Oregon to Washington. He now will not hesitate to jump on my bed and steal my pillow. When I sit on the edge of the couch playing video games he will hop up on the couch and curl around my back. He loves his ears and head rubbed and patted. His fear of water is even gone. It took a long summer and going to the lake everyday before he would get in. I think he was mostly just worried because with me being in the water I was way too far away for comfort. Now if we go anywhere near water he goes off and wades in it if I don’t get the chance to stop him. He is a regular ol’ rebel now.

Sorry, I am getting a bit ramble-y but I want to talk about Sheppy more!

He got an eye ulcer D:

One of the coolest things about Sheppy is that he is very trusting. He walks off leash a lot better than on leash. In my old town we used to have a route we would walk. We would start at Subway and walk down the riverbed (Its Arizona so obviously there is no water in it.) I can call Shep back from anything. He could be half way to a rabbit and I could call him and he would come back. One of the few times he did not come back, I had not been paying attention, and he disappeared in a herd of cattle! I literal herd of cows! They started to panic and run off and he was running in the middle! I was panicked. Yelling and watching in horror as flashbacks of Mufasa was flashing through my memory. He eventually came back and was fine. I aged about 10 years. Once we reached a point there was a hole in a fence and we would pop up in the center of town in a back road. We would skirt our way to the main street and at every cross walk he would sit on the sidewalk and then after I gave the word he would dash across the street and wait for me on the other side.