The Importance Of Dogs In Our Lives and On The Farm [Opinion]

What’s a farm without a dog or two? It was not many weeks ago when I wrote about the loss of our Airedale terrier, Tillie. I’m sorry to say, since then, we also lost our dear Australian shepherd, Lizzie.

For the first time in many years, we’re now “dogless” — and it’s not a good feeling.

Some friends have wondered if Lizzie died of a broken heart, missing her buddy of over 11 years, Tillie. I feel safe in saying that was not the case.

Lizzie was a year and a half when Tillie came to us as a puppy. It became clear Lizzie — who had arrived at our farm as a puppy while our previous Airedale, Oliver, was an elderly dog in decline — had enjoyed her role as “only dog” between the death of Oliver and the arrival of Tillie.

While Lizzie and Tillie became pals and we jokingly called them “sisters,” no matter how hard we tried to pay equal attention to these two gals, there was always a certain element of jealousy between them.

Lizzie was a smart dog, who no doubt realized in their latter days that Tillie was having health issues. So Lizzie didn’t seem surprised or alarmed when Tillie disappeared from the scene.

In fact, if anything, Lizzie seemed more relaxed. At nearly 13 years of age, Lizzie had health problems of her own to worry about related to a liver tumor diagnosed over a year ago and, more recently, signs of congestive heart failure related to the tumor’s growth.

As their breed’s name implies, Australian shepherds — which originated in the United States, rather than Australia, by the way — are a herding breed.

When I first met Dennis years ago, he had an Aussie who liked to herd the neighbor’s chickens onto Dennis’ place. When we later got into raising beef cattle, which were sometimes stubborn about being moved in and out of the pasture, a herding dog seemed like the answer to those problems.

Lizzie came from championship breeding stock, so after we acquired her as a puppy, we soon connected with a person who trained herding dogs and their owners.

We attended quite a few herding lessons with Lizzie, but for some reason she didn’t seem interested in rounding up the trainer’s practice sheep. Dennis and I didn’t really excel in our roles at directing Lizzie in her herding endeavors either, so we gave up on our dreams of Lizzie herding our cattle for us.

Interestingly, Lizzie did possess some herding instincts. However, one of the few times she chose to display them was when a vehicle came into our driveway. She would circle around it over and over again, including our own vehicles, as the driver slowly advanced onto our farmstead. It was dangerous behavior for her, and one which we tried unsuccessfully to discourage.

Perhaps Lizzie’s attraction to motor vehicles was because there was nothing she enjoyed more than a ride in either our pickup or dump truck with Dennis at the wheel.

It was impossible to open the door to one of those trucks without Lizzie jumping right in — whether you wanted her to or not.

She made countless trips to the feed mill, or to pick up loads of hay, or to transport loads of manure on stable cleaning days. In more recent times, she would still trot to the doors of these trucks, but needed assistance to get into and out of them.

Another signature Lizzie move was one that caused me to nickname her “little Lady Lizzie.”

She had two white front paws. Often, when she laid down, she would cross one paw over the other, looking like two white-gloved hands of a prim and proper young lady.

Unlike Tillie, who was more of a gobbler as soon as she was presented with food, Lizzie was also more ladylike when dining, eating her food at a more leisurely pace.

After dinner, Lizzie would often lay at the foot of the man cave steps and rest her chin on the bottom step, so she could keep an eye on things in the kitchen above.

She eagerly awaited us joining her in the man cave for an evening of television watching and — more importantly — for bringing the little dishes of frozen yogurt we served the dogs at 9 o’clock nightly.

Did I mention Lizzie knew exactly when it was ice cream time and would let us know if we were late providing it?

Being dogless is a sad feeling. We miss the companionship of our two canine friends. We also miss their watchdog services. Delivery persons and others arrive without any fanfare. Likewise, the parade of deer and other wildlife through our fields also go unannounced these days.

Will we get other dogs? Yes, we will! It’s just a matter of timing and I promise to let you know when we get our new canine arrivals.

They’ll have big paws to fill, but we know Tillie and Lizzie will always live on in our fond memories of them.

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