The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
More about pets
We brought Heidi with us when we moved to Union from Warrenton. Great Danes aren’t known around Union, and some of our children’s friends here wanted to see “the Great Dane,” who was in the bedroom on our bed with the door closed so she wouldn’t be running around. The little friends ended up all standing around the bed with Heidi in the middle of it, calmly enjoying the attention, as interested in her audience as the boys were in her, and it was very comical, as if she were some kind of exotic “rare specimen” being studied. And they were impressed!
One day Dave put her in the barn, where she died a natural death.
Later, another Great Dane, Foxy, came to live with us the first of several Great Danes we adopted. Foxy was a female Brindle, who was “the-dog-that-walked-by-itself,” a loner, and she had a litter of nine puppies in 1987. So, apparently she welcomed some company! The sire was Tigger, a male Brindle who we had adopted through a Washington Post ad when he was about four. They were a matched pair. Dave was “nanny” for the puppies. We kept just one, named the Whirlybird because that’s what she was. She turned out to be quite unmanageable, and our veterinarian was willing to find her a good home as long as the details remained confidential, so we never knew who adopted her. When Tigger was five years old, he and I were napping on my bed one afternoon; he suddenly jumped off the bed, and died.
And the last adoptee was one of our favorites, Jericho, another fawn. He didn’t have the most attractive physique, but he had a most endearing personality. We think he was the best and smartest and bravest one of all our Great Danes. Dave recalls and our youngest son Erik and Jericho traveling all over this place together. The kids took him to the vet one time, and although he was hurting and walking funny, he sat in the waiting room with his rump on a chair and some of his legs touching the floor, looking proud, and well behaved; he was the star of the waiting room. It was terrible when we had to have Jericho put down by our veterinarian, in our bedroom, because his kidneys were failing and he couldn’t get up.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee (1931 – 2024) built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
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