My wife and I were amazed, or maybe we were just easily impressed... I like to think Duke was just a brilliant dog, whatever the reason every single time Tonya or I tossed the ball this little puppy brought it back. It was like he was born knowing how to play fetch.
Impressed with this little hound with a round belly I made a deal with the little guy, I said, ".....I'm going to throw this ball one more time,....if you bring it back to me we will take you home and give you a home for life!"
That is how and why we adopted a dog.... We got him home, debating back and forth only briefly before deciding his name would be Duke. He may have been just a little guy the day we adopted him, but Duke was full of surprises, growing like Clifford the big red dog.
It wasn't just Duke's physical size that grew...so did his personality. Ironically playing fetch has it's limits.... OMG, hard as it may be to believe eventually you grow tired of playing fetch....I think it was about the millionth time I tossed the ball....
There were other issues, Duke did not like being left alone or out of the conversation. Once our neighbor Gary stopped by, I stepped out on the porch talking for just a couple of minutes. Duke was not a happy camper, I know because when I stepped back into the house I discovered he had chewed a hole in the dinning room wall. I was pissed!!!
We had just bought a brand new home, it was less than a month old, and suddenly it had a hole in the wall. We soon learned Duke would eat about anything......
I worked as a manager on the night shift, 3 until 11 pm, sometimes over-time kept me until 1 am. This meant Duke and Tonya had some quality time together in the evenings. Life seemed perfect, that is until I got a call at work one night from Tonya saying Duke was dying.
She said he had struggled to go to the restroom and she noticed his intestines were hanging out of his anus..... We were newly weds and she insisted I had to come home to care for Duke. I rushed the 30 miles home and found Duke in destress, sure enough something was hanging out of his butt......
But the longer I examined Duke the more confused I became.... eventually I took hold of the item and pulled gently. OMG, to my surprise I ended up pulling a complete pair of Tonya's panty hose out of Duke's butt.....
We are talking over 3 feet of panty hose.....Oh, poor Duke, the look on his face, removing the stockings seemingly cleaned his system end to end.... Duke survived, and instantly became a little more selective in his menu items.....
