Pomeranians

From Peppy to Honey

I’ve had a lifelong love of dogs, and my favorite breed has always been the Pomeranian.

This, I’m quite sure, is due to the fact that my first dog was a Pomeranian that my dad brought home one day, much to everyone’s surprise, especially my mom’s!

He was an Air Force recruiter and was visiting a home to talk to a young man and his parents. While in the home, the family’s dog, a Pomeranian named Peppy, stopped by to investigate my dad. Some comments were made to the effect that my dad thought he was a nice dog, and then, quite surprisingly, the family asked him if he’d like to take the dog home because they didn’t really want him. In my dad’s recollection, he came home and discussed it with my mom first, but in my recollection, he just came home with the dog and THEN discussed it with my mom. By then, my brother and I had seen the dog, so there was no turning back.

I loved Peppy and his foxlike appearance with his long, reddish coat and black, tapered nose. I enjoyed brushing him and bathing him and taking him for walks. Mostly, I just loved his company.

He often slept by my bed, and due to us living right next door to the neighborhood bully who would pelt Peppy with snowballs and throw lit firecrackers at him, Peppy would often sleep under my bed which offered a denlike sanctuary for him because it had a bed skirt that hugged the floor. Believe me, we did everything possible to protect Peppy from the demon next door, but all we had was a chain link fence surrounding our backyard, so the kid could easily see Peppy anytime he was outside doing his business unattended.

I never understood how a family could give up such a sweet dog, and I never understood how a kid could be so cruel that he would try to torture my little dog. I still don’t understand those things. Dogs, and especially small ones, are precious and should be protected, not punished.

Peppy was a part of my life all through the latter half of my childhood, and he was the one I most wanted to see when I’d come home from college. I don’t recall the exact timing, but sometime within a year or two of graduating college, my mom called me one day quite hysterical. Peppy couldn’t move. She’d taken him to the vet who told her that he wasn’t going to get better, and she’d had to make the difficult decision to have him put to sleep. In the end, even though I’d always seen Peppy as my dog, he was always more my mom’s dog because she did most of the caretaking of him. But he was my first dog, and because of him, I’ve had others, including three more Pomeranians.

The second came into my life in a very strange way and it was either shortly before Peppy’s death or shortly after it. I was driving down the highway on my way home from a long-term subbing job prior to the start of my long teaching career. Ahead of me I could see something small and whitish weaving back and forth across the road, and as I got nearer, I saw that it was a dog and not just any type of dog — it was a Pomeranian. A very mangy one, but a Pomeranian nonetheless.

In a panic, very concerned that this small dog was going to get run over, I pulled over and coaxed him to me. He was skittish, but he was also scared and lost, so he came to me, and I put him in my car. I drove to the nearest farm place and asked if he was their dog, but he wasn’t. There was nowhere else nearby, so I took him into town and placed a lost dog ad in the newspaper — clearly, this happened long before the advent of social media and its power to reconnect lost dogs with their owners at lightning speed.

Then I took him home. A couple days later, a woman called me. She’d seen the ad. She came to my house and in our conversation about the dog, I learned that she’d just got him from someone else who hadn’t wanted him, and she knew he wasn’t a good farm dog. Well, duh. What Pomeranian is a good farm dog? She didn’t really know what to do with him to prevent him from running off again, etc. I told her about Peppy and how I really wanted to get a Pomeranian myself again one day, and before I knew it, she asked if I’d just keep him.

Well, I couldn’t say no to another free, unwanted Pomeranian. My husband (now my ex for many many reasons, one of which was his dislike for pets) wasn’t happy to learn that I’d accepted the dog, but we were still newlyweds and he still tried to do a few things to make me happy, so he reluctantly agreed to “let” me keep the dog.

I named him Highway.

He was somewhat snaggle-toothed, and his coat was rough, so I don’t think he was a full-bred Pomeranian, but he looked like one, and that’s all that mattered to me. He was larger than Peppy had been, but he was a really good dog. He, like many Pomeranians, was very high strung, however, and one day I returned home from work to find that he had destroyed the window blinds in one room. That was not a good day.

I truly adored him for the few years I had him, and I’m forever haunted by the early morning hours in which I failed him and he disappeared forever from my life.

He woke me in the wee early hours of the morning, needing to go outside to pee. I let him out and then lay down, intending to just lie there a moment while he did his business, knowing he’d scratch at the door when he was done like he always did. But I fell asleep, and he never scratched. When I awoke and realized so much time had passed, I went outside in a panic to look for him, but he was gone. We lived on another highway, so my first fear was that he’d gone onto it and been hit, but there was no evidence of that at all, and we combed the ditches on both sides of the road. Then I thought he’d wandered into a pasture and been hurt or caught by something, so my husband went out on the four-wheeler and looked everywhere for him. No sign of him. Then I hoped that someone had done what I’d done and picked him up and would do the decent thing and place an ad or let me know somehow. Time passed and my hope died with it. To this day, I do not know what happened to my beloved Highway and I will never forgive myself for falling asleep.

To my husband’s credit (and this is probably the only time I’ll give him any credit whatsoever for having any decency at all), he knew how sad and devastated I was by the loss of Highway. There was a lady in town who raised registered Pomeranians, so he bought me one.

That’s how Prince came into my life.

I don’t even remember his full registered name, but Prince was part of it, so Prince became his name. He had Peppy’s coloring, so sometimes I accidentally called him Peppy instead of Prince. If I could go back in time, there are many things I would do differently, and one of those things I’d do differently would involve ridding myself sooner of my ex and never letting Prince go.

After my son was born, I began to tire greatly of living in the very small, old house on my husband’s family’s “farm.” I didn’t want to live so near a highway with a small child either, so I made a push to move into town, and after failing to find anything even remotely better than the house we were already living in, the decision was made to build a house instead. I won’t get into all the problems that that led to, but suffice it to say that I had to make an ultimatum that said I was doing it with or without my husband, so he countered — probably assuming that it would make me change my mind — with the ultimatum that he’d move into the new house with me but that there forever would be no pets allowed to live in the house. Yes, forever.

Yes, in retrospect, I should have chosen Prince over the husband, and yes, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have caved to that idiotic demand, but at the time, I simply wanted a new home and a place to call our own. I thought that letting Prince go might show my stupid husband how serious I was about this and then maybe he’d stop being such an ass about things. He never stopped being an ass even though I gave up my dog.

Don’t worry. I gave him to a really nice couple, and I kept in touch with him, and they gave me regular updates about him. He was very loved and very spoiled there. Many years later, after he’d passed on and after I’d finally divorced the stupid husband, that couple gave my daughter a kitten — the cat she’d wanted for years and had begged her father to let her have, but he forever held his ground about no pets in the house (thus, one month after he moved out, she got a kitten).

Fast forward to one year ago, almost to the date. I’m sitting at a basketball game next to my mom, and she shows me a Facebook post from a distant cousin of mine (that I didn’t even know). The post is a photo of a white Pomeranian, and the message essentially says that the woman wants to get rid of her.

I didn’t need another dog. My house currently had two dogs — one was my daughter’s and one was my boyfriend’s — and the aforementioned cat, who still lived with me but who was also very sick from diabetes (the insulin I’d been giving him for almost a year just wasn’t working as it should for him) and would soon die from it (something I didn’t yet know at this point one year ago). Thus, I didn’t need another dog even thought I’d been saying for years that I’d get another Pomeranian someday.

But the photo spoke to me. Her eyes spoke to me. Her little, adorable face spoke to me. So, I contacted the woman and set up a time to visit and see the dog. That was the plan. Just go see her. Yeah, right.

Much like my dad all those years ago, I found myself in a house with a couple who very clearly did not want a dog that, to me, seemed like a very nice dog. They had two other Pomeranians, and they said that this one was too young and too aggressive for the other two, and the older two had poor quality of life because of her.

Hmmm.

From what I could see, it seemed like they all had poor quality of life because of the couple who owned them. They were kept all day in a large kennel that had a doggie door to the outside where they could pee and poop in a very small enclosed area. In the short time I was there, I learned that they had acquired the dog about a year prior from a woman who had bought her from a Pomeranian breeder. That first woman had got her to BE A FARM DOG!!! What the hell? Again, people, Pomeranians are not farm dogs. Anyway, apparently, that first woman had soon realized her mistake and then asked this couple to take her because they had two Pomeranians already, so everyone thought this dog would be an easy addition to the pack. She wasn’t, but I still say it was due to the couple and not to the dog. They hadn’t updated any of her vaccines, she was matted so badly in many places, and she was quite literally starved for attention. The moment I sat down to get a look at her, she jumped in my lap and started licking my face — like she was begging me to take her with me.

When I asked if I could have a day to think about it, they once again stressed that they really just wanted to get rid of her, and it needed to be NOW because they were only days away from a family trip to Florida. Whatever. By that time, I had decided that I wasn’t going to leave the dog with them even if it meant taking her and finding her a good home on my own. They didn’t want any money — they just wanted to get rid of her. So, again, much like my dad all those years ago, I went home with a free Pomeranian who was a month shy of turning two years old.

I immediately renamed her to Honey, a name that reflects her coloring and her personality. Her coloring is enough like Highway’s that my mom has called her Highway a couple times. Of course, I decided to keep her. February 28th will mark the anniversary of the date in which I rescued her from a home that didn’t want her.

It took a solid month of daily combing and cutting to rid her of all the mats in her fur. Once I’d given her probably the first good grooming she’d had in a year, she seemed to shrink to half her size — that’s because of the sheer quantity of fur I brushed out of her! I wanted to drive back to that couple’s house and slap them for not taking care of her at all.

When I’d asked them about her food, they assured me that she didn’t overeat and that they just put food in her bowl whenever it was empty. Good grief. She was overweight at the first vet appointment I took her to only a week after I got her, but now she’s a very healthy and appropriate weight because I control what she eats. Believe me, if I simply left food in her bowl anytime it was empty, she would eat it! She also gets regular exercise with me on daily walks and lots of ball playing in the back yard — she absolutely loves to play ball, but the previous three Pomeranians didn’t.

Her personality has blossomed this past year, and even though I loved all three male Pomeranians, I wonder if there’s something to be said for her being a female that makes her a much more cuddly and sweet-tempered dog to have around? Even though I thought I didn’t need another dog a year ago when I first saw her sad face in that Facebook post, the universe knew that I needed this dog.

I won’t be giving her up because of some man’s stupid-ass ultimatum, and I certainly don’t let her outside in the dark without supervision even though she’s in a fenced-in back yard. I hope she lives longer than Peppy did even though he made it to old age. She’s not quite three years old and already in the third home she’s ever known, but this is her forever home, and she’s the best dog I’ve ever had.

She’s my Honey.

Until next time. Upgrade to paid status to read the next portion of novel number eight. You’ll also gain access to everything behind every paywall in the full archive, so you can read all the portions of the novel that you’ve missed.

Tammy Marshall