April 9, 2005 - April 23, 2018
My family got my dog Mandy in 2005 from a lab breeder in North Carolina. She was one of five puppies in her litter: two yellow boys, two white girls, and one white boy. We never met her mom, Snowflake, and when we asked the breeder about her, he just said, "She's not doing too well," and wouldn't tell us anything more. We suspect that her mom died giving birth or shortly afterwards. Her dad, Song For Guy, was from England. We brought Mandy home when she was 7 weeks old (I was 14 and my brother Jordan was almost 12).
Mandy was the most crazy, hyper puppy ever! She ran around and chewed stuff until she was so tired she fell asleep. Before we moved to Virginia, we had to re-paint the wall in our finished basement room to cover up her teeth marks. We were amazed when she was about 1 year old and she would finally lie down for 30 seconds without trying to sleep! But she was the most adorable puppy ever! She eventually calmed down, but it took a while.
Nicknames:
Whitefang- She was a wild puppy, and she nipped us constantly and chewed and ate everything.Goat- She ate everything.
The tube- Everything she ate would go in one end and out the other.
Sweet petunia- She was sweet but a little bit stinky.
Slurpy- When she got older she would drink lots of water and then dribble all over the floor.
More self-explanatory nicknames- Doggy, Woggy (evolved out of Doggy), Fluffy
Hobbies:
Chewing her Nylabone, chewing on sticks, playing fetch, hiking, swimming, playing with stuffed animals, sniffing around the backyard, getting backrubs, lying in the backyard and watching/listening to the birds (when she was older)
Favorite foods:
Peanut butter, scrambled eggs, chicken, cherry tomatoes, blackberries, blueberries, Milkbones, string beans, carrots, bunny poop, sticks, rotten wood, grass clumps from the lawnmower . . . okay, she was a lab; she would eat anything!
Hiker doggy
We took Mandy hiking regularly since she was a puppy. She loved to go exploring with us and stopped to sniff all the trees on the sides of the trail. For the first couple years we hiked with her on a long (about 20 ft) leash so she could have some freedom without running too far away. She was so good at staying near us that eventually we started letting her hike off-leash when we were in areas without a lot of people. She was good at staying on the trail, though she liked to run a bit ahead of us. We taught her the command, "This way" so that when a trail split, if she started to go down the wrong trail, we would say, "This way" and she would go back onto the right trail.
Therapy dog
Mandy was never trained as a therapy dog, but practically speaking, she was one. She loved going to the assisted living home to visit my grandma and the other residents . . . and eating any crumbs people had spilled! My grandma's roommate hardly ever talked, but sometimes she would talk when she saw Mandy.
Mandy also helped me a lot with my social anxiety and depression. It was easier for me to hang out with friends or have company over if Mandy was around because taking care of her kept me busy, and she gave me something to talk about.
Mandy was a little dense, so she normally didn't seem to know when I was upset, but that could be a good thing because I didn't have to worry about making her sad when I was sad. She was always happy to see me. Every day when I came home from work she would greet me at the door, I'd give her a Milkbone, and then she'd try to herd me into the living room so I could sit there and watch her chew her bone. She just wanted me to hang out with her. When my depression was really bad, I started to think that if I died, not many people would miss me, and even my parents would eventually get over it. (Now I know that that's a ridiculous lie, but depression can convince you of some crazy things.) But I knew that Mandy would miss me if I died, and I never really questioned that. Just having Mandy around and knowing how much she would miss me was motivation to keep living. When I stayed at a residential counseling place a few times in 2016, my parents brought her to visit, and seeing her was really helpful and fun for me and the other residents.
In March of 2018 Mandy started getting a lot of weird symptoms, particularly coughing and panting hard after very small amounts of exercise. We took her to the vet who did lots of tests, and she was diagnosed with lymphoma. The lymphoma was pretty advanced, so we knew she probably wouldn't have much time to live, and she was too old to consider chemo. We put her on Prednisone, and that helped for a few weeks and then she got worse again. Even when she was really sick, she was such a good sport and still wanted to be around us. When she wasn't feeling too bad, she would sit outside for hours and listen to the birds sing. Sometimes she napped all day to save up her energy to wade across our creek and spend 10 or 15 minutes wandering around, looking for bunny poop to eat. Eventually the lymphoma got worse and she had to be put down before it became an emergency. The vet and her assistant came to our house to put Mandy down. Considering her love of food, I thought it was fitting that Mandy died in the dining room.
Who would have thought that our crazy little devil puppy would turn into the best dog ever?!
