Buppy

Nancy and Buppy

By the time my 8 year old son and I got to the address for 'free puppies', only one scrawny, cowering border collie-looking puppy was left. I took my son aside and said that we should keep looking as I thought the puppy might be sick but he insisted that he wanted THAT dog (later he said it was because he thought no one would else take her and she would be killed). We stopped at our vet on the way home who said she was 'wormy' but fine so we treated her and went home. For 3 days she simply sat in her basket looking at us with big eyes and not moving (I began to question my vet). But then she must have decided she could trust us and quickly became a playful, extremely happy little dog. She loved everyone and everything--the chickens, the horses, and even the cats. When our mama cat had 3 kittens, Buppy (my son had been told he could name her and wanted to be original!) decided mama cat was not an attentive enough mother and rewashed each of those little kittens several times each day. For the 12 years Buppy lived, those 3 cats adored her--curling around her legs and sleeping beside her. To the end of her life, she 'washed' them regularly and lovingly. Once when my principal husband had brought home 12 tiny chicks hatched in one of his school's classrooms a big storm was brewing. He put down their box to close the car door and a huge gust of wind blew over the box. He had parked in a field next to our house where the grass was quite long and as nature dictates, the frightened chicks scattered and ran and then 'hid' motionless and soundless. It was obviously going to rain soon and these chicks were too little to survive storm conditions. My husband and I crawled around carefully on our hands and knees but only found one chick. Then I noticed6 month old Buppy sort of beside me, crouched on her front legs and looking back and forth from the grass in front of her to me. I tried to get her to go away but she would not move and contiued to swival her head back and forth. I moved toward her and realized my cocker spaniel/border collie mix was 'pointing' a chick--she had 'deducted' what we were doing and within 10 minutes she had found every chick--in time to save them from the rain. From then on she helped us find all sorts of things--we just named it, animate or inanimate, and she found it. She was the smartest dog we ever saw. She died peacefully in her sleep at 12 and we miss her to this day.