Let’s Share What We Know And Feel

Animal smells hit the nose hard when the door to the adoption room is opened.

Rows of chain-link kennels stretch down a short hall, then around a corner and down yet another corridor.

Yelps, barks and whimpers create a deafening sound as the purebred and mixed-breed dogs in the pens vie for each visitor’s attention.

The Humane Society building in Boulder, Colo., is as far back as I can trace my oldest dog’s history.

In 1986, shelter employees told me someone found him wandering in the Rocky Mountains just west of Boulder. I named him Alpine. He looks like a cross between an Alaskan husky and an Akita. He’s mainly black, which accentuates his amber eyes. The tip of his tail and his paws, chest and belly are white. He’s almost 10 years old now.

Where I grew up, everyone got their dog from the animal shelter. I didn’t know dogs were bred to perform unique tasks - like hunt, pull a sled or herd sheep - until I was in high school.

A friend of mine learned about dogs much differently. Many of the dogs he grew up with were bred to retrieve or point birds. He knew the entire history of these dogs because they were cared for from the moment they were born.

This friend still owns hunting dogs. One of his dogs died this spring. She was an English setter named Sally. She was 16.

Alpine and Sally started their lives very differently.

Sally was brought into the world for a purpose: to point and retrieve birds for someone who loves to hunt. Alpine was born by happenstance, a chance mating of two unaltered dogs probably allowed to roam free.

When Sally was a puppy she ate good food regularly and was seen by a veterinarian. Alpine was starving and sick when he was found as a pup wandering in the mountains.

Good people planned Sally’s birth and gave her only to someone committed to care for her as long as she lived. Alpine wandered alone and unmissed in the Rockies before he spent weeks locked in a pen at the animal shelter.

But what Alpine and Sally share is what this new column is all about.

They have both been loved. They’ve had physical and mental exercise nearly every day of their lives. They have traveled and enjoyed the outdoors with their human companions. They’ve formed relationships with other dogs, and been held and petted and groomed.

They’ve done funny things, and naughty things.

Although their lives started out differently, they will end the same.

When Sally died, she died in a home where she was loved. Alpine will know that same comfort.

This column is about dogs, and the people who care about them.

Twice monthly I’ll write about purebred and mixedbreed dogs. I’ll examine all aspects of dogs - their health, their training, their history, why different cultures respond to them in different ways, regulations aimed at them, and books and videos about them, to name a few.

This is not an advice column. Mostly, I’ll tell you what the local and national experts are saying. Sometimes, I’ll offer my opinion on a subject. I hope you’ll let me know yours.

A calendar will accompany this column. In it, I’ll list Inland Northwest dog shows, field trials, training classes, obedience trials, sled dog races and other dog events. If you’d like a dog event publicized, write: Mary Sagal, Spokesman-Review Features Section, P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210.

Include the date, time and location of your event, as well as a number to call for more information.

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