Mandy Stories

My dog Mandy died in April, a couple weeks after her 13th birthday. In the last post I shared more general information about Mandy and her life. Here are some of my favorite stories about Mandy.

The Toads

Mandy at 7 weeks

When Mandy was a puppy and we lived in North Carolina, she found a toad outside. We didn't notice and let her inside. She carried the toad in her mouth and dropped him under the dining room table. He lay on his back, playing dead. Mandy got bored with the "dead" toad and walked off, and we put him back outside.

When Mandy was a puppy, she liked to chew on anything, including books, so we had pulled the books off of the bottom shelf in our finished basement room, and it became "Mandy's shelf" that she liked to play on. Mandy found a toad outside and carried it into the basement room and dropped it on her shelf to play with. We took the toad back outside before she could play with it too much.

Fig Newtons

One evening when Mandy was a puppy, we left a package of fig newtons on the edge of the dining room table. She jumped up and grabbed the package and swallowed the package of about 6 fig newtons--in the cellophane wrapper. We were worried about her and called the vet, but they said they thought she would be okay and just told us to keep an eye on her. A couple days later the fig newtons came out--still in the wrapper!

Lifeguard Doggie

When Mandy was a big puppy, we took her to a swimming hole called Coontree. There was a pretty high rock/cliff that people liked to jump off of into the water. Mandy was on her long leash on the shore, watching people jump into the water. Mandy saw people jumping and disappearing under the water, and she freaked out, thinking they were drowning. She started crying and pulled so hard that she broke her leash and swam out to "rescue" the people. She swam back when the people came up and she realized they were okay.

Mandy swimming

Homeschooling

I was homeschooled for most of middle school and all of high school. In high school Mandy definitely had her favorite and least-favorite subjects. We watched a Geometry DVD from the Bob Jones curriculum called "Geometry with Mr. Cohn," and Mandy hated it! She would always lie on the floor and groan during Geometry. But she loved Literature! My mom and Jordan and I took turns reading out loud, and Mandy would wiggle on her back and get belly rubs.

Baby Bunny

I didn't see this happen, but my Mom told me about it and I saw the baby bunny later. Mandy was playing in the backyard and found a nest of tiny baby bunnies. She picked up one of the bunnies and gently carried it in her mouth back to the house. The bunny died, but there were no teeth marks on it. We think it must have died of a heart attack!

Volleyball

Last spring I took Mandy to watch a beach volleyball game my friends from GAP (Northstar Church's graduates and professionals group) was playing. She loved watching volleyball and didn't want to leave! It was a hot day and I didn't want Mandy to overheat, so I tried to take her back to the car, but she didn't want to move. My friend Erinn had brought her little dog Polie to the game. Mandy didn't like Polie because when we first got there Polie barked and maybe growled at her. Erinn knew I was trying to leave, so she picked Polie up and set him down next to Mandy. Mandy gave Polie a disgusted look and got up and moved maybe a couple yards and then lay down again. Erinn picked Polie up and set him down next to Mandy again. Mandy finally got up let me take her back to the car.

The Rattlesnake

Last summer for Father's Day, my parents and Mandy and I went hiking at the War Spur Trail past Mountain Lake. We were letting Mandy hike off leash since there aren't normally many people on the trail, and Mandy is normally good about staying on the trail. Mandy was in front and I was a little behind her. Suddenly Mandy stopped, and we realized she had stopped to look at a huge rattlesnake in the middle of the trail. Mandy was only about a foot or two away from the snake, and it had its head up and was rattling. Mom and Dad kept calling Mandy and I was screaming at her, but she wouldn't come. I finally decided I would get behind Mandy, as far from the snake as I could, grab her collar and yank her away, and risk getting bitten. But before I could grab her, Mandy finally came to my parents very reluctantly and thankfully did not get a snake bite.

The rattlesnake

Cheerios

When Mandy was little we tried to teach her to fetch, and she was good at bringing the ball back, but it was hard to get her to give it up so we could throw it again. We started bribing her to drop the ball by throwing Cheerios, and we would grab the ball while she was getting the Cheerios. This was supposed to be temporary, but somehow "Cheerio fetch" lasted the rest of her life. At some point my mom started buying off-brand Cheerios for Mandy and name-brand Cheerios for herself because the off-brand ones were cheaper and Mandy didn't seem to care. The off-brand Cheerios were also a good snack to take on walks and a low-calorie snack for when she was begging. Mandy didn't seem to mind until the day before she died. She started to lose her appetite and wouldn't eat the off-brand Cheerios, even if I put them in my hand. I wondered if she would eat the name-brand ones, so I put some in her bowl and she gobbled them up!

Mandy with a Cheerio stuck on her jowls

In Memory of Mandy

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?!