HERE'S PEPPER
Hi. My name is Pepper. I'm a Catahoula and I have adopted a new family to live with. My first family abandoned me along a road in North Alabama in November 1998. I was very lonely and didn't know what to do. But after a while, as I was hiding in some bushes, I saw a guy (Duane Ridenhour) walking along the road picking up litter. It didn't look like very much fun. I tried barking at him but he didn't pay much attention to me. I figured that if I wagged my tail at him he might want to play. So I ran out out of the bushes and let him know that I would be a lot more fun to play with than picking up trash. He didn't think so though. He told me to "git" and "stay" and "go away". But I was sort of young and didn't know what those things meant. So I kept wagging my tail and barking. He finally took his trash bag and started running toward home. That was a neat game. He is a pretty fast runner but it was easy for me to keep up with him. Just before we got home I saw some dogs over at a neighbor's house. They distracted me for a minute and when I looked around for Duane he had disappeared. I am lucky to be a Catahoula. Catahoula's have a very keen sense of smell. It was very easy to pick up Duane's trail. He went into the house across the road. I went over there and waited on the steps for someone to come out and play with me. It was only a few minutes before Duane's very nice wife Vickie opened the door. One minute later I was an adopted puppy. I now have a very cool place to have fun.
About one month after I adopted Duane and Vickie I had a visitor from Memphis come and spend a weekend. We became best of friends. Pete is a neat dog. And as all male dogs do, he liked to mark things. He decided to lay claim to Duane's Nordic Track ski equipment. He did a good job of marking it. He is now known as Nordic Pete. I thought it was cool that Pete cared enough to mark stuff for me.
Shortly after Nordic Pete headed back to Memphis, Duane and Vickie took off on a trip to Missouri (Christmas 1998). They left me at a boarding place for a dog vacation. When they picked me up my head was swollen, I had a bleeding puncture wound in my neck, and a hard knot on my side. I can't remember what happened. Duane said I looked like I had been hit by a car. The people who boarded me didn't mention it until they brought me out of the kennel. They said they didn't know what had happened and that it couldn't have happened there. All I knew was that my head hurt.
The dog doctor had to make some holes in my head and he gave me a lot of pills to eat. The pills weren't as good as my other treats. Then the doctor had to put a tube in my head for a couple weeks to help the fluid drain out. Duane and Vickie's vacation all of a sudden turned out to be a lot more expensive than they had planned for. I don't know what $600 means, but it sounds like a lot of chew toys. The boarding place ended up paying around half of it but they still couldn't explain what had happened.
I have now recovered from my boarding injuries. But we recently found that I have severe hip problems that will eventually require a total hip replacement. It can only be done at Auburn University. Forget the surgery, I just want to play.
EPILOG:
Duane writes: (March 2000) Pepper has been with us about a year and a half now and is still as demanding as ever. She likes to play hard and will go as long as anyone wants to test her. Her head swelling came back a couple months ago and she had to have another surgery to clean out the problem. It seems that the original procedure failed to get whatever was causing the liquid accumulation. Her back end seems to be getting a little worse. She has trouble getting up after resting. But once on her feet she is the usual handfull of "let's go play" dog. If only people could forget their pains as well as she can.
(September 2000) Pepper has continued to have swelling and drainage from her head for months now. Our vet was starting to think that she had some systemic illness and decided to go in and take some tissue samples for analysis. What he found is that Pepper's skin is detached from her skull and that provides a place for fluids to accumulate. He had to to in and rough up her skull so the tissue would have something to grow back to. I guess it was a pretty gruesome surgery (two hours long) as his technicians got too upset to stay in the operating room. Pepper now looks sort of like a little Frankenstein dog with all her stainless steel stitches in her head. She is a mess right now, but on the good side, we are relieved that it is not some incurable disease. The vet said that it all goes back to the injury she received a couple years ago.
(August 2002) Pepper's head completely healed and she looks like a regular dog again. Her back end isn't getting any worse and she only seems bothered by it when she first gets up after a nap (especially if she has been napping on the hard floor instead of her soft bed). She loves to hunt mice and rabbits in the fields and chase birds that land too close to her. She never catched anything, but like any good hunter, she knows that it is the hunt itself that is fun. Catching something isn't all that important; but the chase is a blast.
duanevickie@mindspring.com
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