Snowball

Snowball was my first dog, a Maltese/Poodle mix, better known as a Maltipoo.
She was given to me on Christmas morning when I was two years old, and although, being so young, I couldn't physically care for her, she was mine. My own puppy who absolutely adored being groomed, even dressed up in silly bonnets and doll clothes just to show off.
She was my baby, and by the time I was four, she had a tiny litter of only three pups with my mom's dog, Ziggie, and therefore introduced Tippy into the world some eleven years ago now.
Tippy was the only one I kept, as his little brother 'Hobs' went to my aunt out in the country as a companion and a woman my mom knew adopted 'Glasses'.

It's very sad to say that Snowball wasn't allowed to live out her life completely. When I was only ten, a wolfdog I had rescued from the pound a few years earlier, Peanut, had attacked Snowy. It was completely out of the blue, and even though it happened in minutes, it seemed like it took hours. I somehow fell down in between them and tried to block Peanut from Snowball so I wound up with a canine tooth stuck in my left forearm, although I wasn't aware of it until, five minutes later after the fight had been won -- obviously by Peanut, who was a hundred and ten pounds compared to Snowball's eighteen -- we had dragged Peanut outside and shut the door, although by the time we rushed Snowy to the vet (and I do mean 'rushed', as in quite literally doing seventy miles per hour down main street and swerving around cars to get to the vet), I stood in the waiting room for what appeared to take ages, even though it was only an hour or two in reality.
I was given the choice, as she was my dog. I could have had them try to do surgery on her. There was a chance it would only make her live long enough to suffer a bit longer until she died prematurely on her own, or it might have worked, although the chance of her having full brain function would be abnormally slim, seeing as when she was attacked, she had been slung at the brick mantle piece and it had cracked her skull, and they were amazed she was still living there on the table with only paid medication and hydration.

In the end, I made the choice to let her go. I didn't want to risk her coming out of such damage, going to be suffering in pain with permanent brain damage and some other rather bad injuries that didn't appear to be any easy matter to heal properly, if they ever would.

That was the longest night of my life, and there's no physical way I'll ever be able to forget my beautiful little Snowball. She was truly one of a kind.

Peanut

Well, as stated earlier, Peanut had attacked and ulitmately killed my first dog, Snowball, although we still had Peanut. It me who made the suggestion that because the attack was so random, perhaps Peanut didn't know what she had done, hadn't realized the seriousness of what might have been her version of an 'argument'.
And god, was I ever wrong.
Not long after this, we had decided to keep Peanut, thinking that it was a one-time thing and although what she did was horrible, perhaps it was natural instinct to her, and it wasn't her fault that Snowball wasn't big or strong enough to properly defend herself.

Well, I wish I knew then what I know now...Peanut had been half wolf. That was no secret, although I didn't know dogs had their own pecking order or anything even close to a civilized hierarchy. I had later found out that Peanut had attacked Snowball because she was fighting to become the alpha female, which was why she showed no interest in harming Tippy, a male whose rank didn't affect her's, and Akita, a three month old omega (lowest of the pack) puppy.

Unfortunately, I found this out ages later, and the horrible thing that happened next was only the day after Snowball's murder.
As I said, I knew nothing about any 'hierarchy' between pet dogs, so I didn't know that Tippy had Chosen Akita as the new alpha female -- a three month old pup, completely bypassing over omega-ranked Peanut, who had only killed Snowball to be awarded the label "alpha female" anyway.
Unfortunately, having Akita as the alpha already, in Peanut's mind, had turned her from the puppy that Peanut had treated like her own daughter for ages into just another obstacle in her way to becoming the leader of the pack.

Peanut had been locked outside in the garage all night, and when I let her in, I remember it perfectly. My mom had called me to come in from outside. I'm not sure why, I think she wanted to check my bandages, although I never really got to find out. From the time I made it to the living room, Peanut had paused in mid-step, glanced over her shoulder, looked me straight in the eye, and then turned and lunged at tiny little Akita, who was only about three to four months old.

I was so shocked that she did it again so soon, I didn't have time to be surprised. I skipped that emotion and went straight to 'furious' at such an obvious betrayal, although being all the way across the room, there was very little I could do until I had taken the couple of seconds to get to her, and by then, the hundred and then pound wolfdog could no doubt end the life of a fifteen-pound puppy if she had just killed an adult dog the day before.

I don't know if Akita would still be alive if it hadn't been for Tippy. Even though I was across the room, he was two feet away at the time, and had managed to get between the two and get in the way of Akita, giving her time to slip beneath the reclining chair only feet away from where Snowball had been attacked, then go out behind it and run in the bedroom to hide out of Peanut's reach.

Peanut was completely uninterested in attacking Tippy, and backed off long enough for us to once again manhandle her outside.

Akita had escaped with nothing but a tiny cut across her eye thanks to Tippy intervening and causing Peanut to temporarily lose her target.

After this, my word meant nothing. I still wanted to keep Peanut -- I knew she couldn't be trusted, but we could have at least built her a large kennel in our roomy back yard with a nice dog house...she was perfectly fine around humans, and even had no care whatsoever about cats or rodents, it was only other dogs -- other female dogs 'in her way' she couldn't be around.

Still, my parents had agreed that it was the "only way", which was a load of bull because I had a perfect option of just to seperate her from the other dogs and to still own her -- although before I could get any points across, they had taken her back to the shelter where we adopted her.

Later that month we were informed that she had been picked up by a neighboring town's police department as a member of the K9 unit, so at least it wasn't a complete waste, as I'm guessing now she is completely under control, and of course around dogs that are all her own size that she might actually think twice about randomly attacking just because she wasn't the boss.

Even after what she did, I won't lie. I really miss her, and I still love her. I hate what she did, and I don't like her for it, although she was part of the family, and even though she's not here anymore, it feels like she still is at times.

Roxi

Roxi was the pup I adopted before I knew anything about Peanut. One of my mom's friends said that one of her friends gave her a rottweiler puppy, and asked if we wanted it, because she couldn't take care of dogs due to some disability.

Of course, having the room and plenty of food and attention to spare, we accepted. A beautiful little rotty pup, who I named "Roxi".

She was the best little pup, and she, Snowball and Tippy got along great. She would have grown up to be Tippy's mate, if it weren't for the fact that she had a genetic disease that was unfortunately incurable, and it caused her to have horrible seisures where she would collapse and simply wail in pain for a few minutes, then stop as suddenly as it began and go about her business.

There was no physical way to treat it, or I would have done anything to save my little baby who followed me around everywhere. Sadly, to spare her having the abnormally painful fits every couple of hours, we had to have her put down at only a few months of age, before she had even begun to live.

I wish I had been able to get to know her better, there's no doubt she would have been one absolutely amazing dog.

Ziggie, AKA Snickerdoodles

I don't know as much about Ziggie as I do a lot of the others because he was here before I was adopted, but other than tolerating and not minding me, he really didn't care much or notice me, not like Riff, Riah and Puffy did. He acknowledged my presence and was never aggressive or for that matter rude to me, he just prefered to go along with his normal life.

Ziggie was the alpha male, who, until I was two and adopted Snowy, was usually pretty grouchy and disliked a lot of company. It was once I got Snowball that he seemed to get an attitude adjustment, becoming much more active and actually playing with her when she was a puppy, even though he never did that with any of the other dogs, nor with Riff and Riah's pups once they had a litter.

He was already seven years old when I had been adopted, so like I said, I didn't see him grow up, so really, I don't know much about his early years.

After he had sired a litter of pups, he had gotten quite old, and by the time I was seven, he was fourteen. By then, he was starting to get older and began developing small issues like very small tumors here and there, gone deaf and blind, and finally began losing control over his bladder and overall functions, it was obvious that his body was beginning to shut down, so to avoid him being unable to move well or even control his bowels, we had him put down to spare him the last few months of being nearly completely immobile and just laying around, unable to see, hear, or even tell when he needed to go outside.

He was a very good dog, and I can only imagine what might have happened if he had still been alive and healthy once we had Peanut, because he had already been in a pack with a wolfdog and hundred and fifteen-pound rottweiler/doberman mix, and had no trouble at all gaining their respect. Was it just that Riff and Riah were more submissive dogs? Or was it that Ziggie had a stronger hold on the 'Alpha' position? It's a shame we'll never know, seeing as his mate had died barely three years after he had to be put down, and at least he had lived his life all the way through.

Mariah

Mariah was my all-time favorite dog, and I'm seriously curious if her personality was somehow spliced in half and some seemed to have found its way into Shadey, the wolfdog I have now, because they both had nearly identical temperaments. Shadey is a bit more aggressive when it comes to defending her family whereas Mariah's mate took that job over, although aside from that, they were both very gentle and extremely well-behaved.
They loved nothing more than to please you, and would go to all sorts of limits to try.
They also absolutely hated being scolded at all, and if even told "No" firmly for the simplest thing like taking a piece of food off of the coffee table, they practically cowered and would even lay down on their sides in the traditional 'submission' pose as an apology.

As for just Mariah, she was a beautiful Australian Shepherd/Rough Collie/Gray Wolf mix who, like all of the dogs before Snowball, were here before me. Strangely enough, she was the one who showed the most interest in me, and I've been told that when I would lay in the floor beside her after she had her litter of pups, she would try to nudge me over with the twelve little hairballs to get me to nurse like they were. My mom said that it was one step too far and kindly let her know that I didn't really /need/ to suckle like her newborn pups and all, and although she was a bit disappointed, eventually gave up, satisfied to just have me sit in her whelping pin with her and pet her and her puppies.

I remember them quite a bit, all eleven had the traditional rottweiler coloring, black with rich tan legs, muzzles, eyebrows and bellies, but there was one pure-grayish one whose fur seemed to be all different shades of grays, whites and blacks. Typically, we named him 'Silver'. Had, by now, we had not already gotten Snowball, we would have kept Silver, although like the rest of the pups who had been adopted by friends and neighbors, he had been found a new home too, although I was devestated to hear that his new owner was irresponsible enough to leave rat poison out, and once Silver had gotten into it like any other curious pup, he hadn't survived.

I'm not positive what ever happened to the eleven others, which I guess is the only bad part about dog breeding, you don't know what could happen to them, accident or otherwise.

As I said, Mariah was the most gentle and kindest dog I knew, and once she developed lung cancer at twelve years old, I don't remember ever feeling more lost, not even when her mate, Riff had passed away only a year or so before.

Riffraff

Riffraff, Mariah's noble mate, a hundred and fifteen pound cross between a doberman pinscher and a rottweiler who was found as a pup tossed in a ditch on the side of the road, covered in mud and grime. The little mutt was nicknamed "Riffraff" because of his current scrounginess, and the name just stuck and got shortened to "Riff".

He was quite a beautiful dog, and I remember that he would always catch wild rats and bats in our barn. It was quite disgusting when he'd snap one up in his huge jaws, crunch them, shake his head and spit them out, but his help certainly kept our house free of vermin.

He was a gentle giant when it came to me or his puppies rolling around over him and roughhousing with him, although dare a foolish teenager be stupid enough to hop our fence and get in our yard, they were lucky to get back out again. xD

I remember one time when I was awake, three kids had jumped our fence and Riff used to go through the doggy door and sleep outside sometimes, and he'd sleep under a bit metal boat that was turned upside down agains the fence. Well, some kids decided they were going to see if they could steal anything, and all I know is that I heard screaming and awoke to look out the window and see Riff hit the fence with all fours, about point-five seconds later than the kids had scaled it again. xDD

He was always such a wonderful watch and guard dog, so proud to do his job. He lived to be around thirteen or so and had to be put down from, if I remember correctly, a faulty heart. I miss him as much as I do Mariah, my furry-adoptee parents.

Puffy

Puffy, the toy poodle/teacup chihuahua mix who lived to be an amazing twenty-two years old and finally died on her own of old age after being deaf and blind, although otherwise perfectly healthy for such an age.

She was already very old, and I'm afraid that by the time I was four, she was passing twenty-two and had simply died peacefully in her sleep. Even though she couldn't hear or see, she was just fine going through the house she'd lived in all of her life, and was perfectly friendly and not at all skittish because of her disabilities.

I can't say I remember a lot about her either, mainly because she preferred to just lounge about and relax instead of play, but would if you tried to get her to.

What I /do/ remember about her was that she was always very lovable and social, and there's no denying that she lived quite a long life for such a tiny little dog.

Brownie

I wish I had more to say about Brownie, although I only know what I was told, because as it turns out, he died exactly one day before I was born at a rather old age. He was Puffy's father, a teacup chihuahua who had to have medicine for strange spasm-like seisures he would get occasionally, although they just caused him to shake and didn't really put him in any pain, so he lived just fine with them, mostly surpressed by the medication.

I wish I would have been able to meet him, from what I've heard I would have really enjoyed his company, and he and his daughter, Puffy were the best of friends.