Gone to the Dogs Week 7: Tink, Daphne, and Penny

Gone to the Dogs Week 7: Tink, Daphne, and Penny

MY DOG STORIES

By Sybil Perrell

Tink

TINK

I had a little dog named Tink when I was in high school and college. I’m not sure how we got her. I think she came from the Pound. She was a tan with a little white Chihuahua mix and she had ESP. She and I were so in tune she knew when I left college at Charlotte and was on my way home. It wasn’t that she told time because it didn’t matter what day or time I got in my car to head home. She just knew. She would go get her “pretty” (her favorite toy) and bring it to the back door and set it down. She would then sit there with it. My mom would see her to do this and say, “Okay, Sybil’s on her way home”. When I made the turn off Woodleaf Road onto 801 at the caution light she would pick up her “pretty” and start dancing around. Mom and Dad knew that I would be home in just a minute since it was only a mile to the house from there.

Daphne

DAPHNE

Daphne came to live with us on Christmas Day. We had been looking for another dog, but wanted a small, adult dog who was already housetrained. I had searched all the area shelters without finding anything. Our neighbor across the street had a son that raised Shelties. That was a little bigger than we wanted but my mom was pretty desperate for the company of a dog, so I called him. He said he had a female Pekinese that he had been fostering and we were welcome to her, if we wanted her. Mom and I talked it over and decided we’d give her a whirl. Daphne was 3 years old when we got her. He brought her in, set her down on the floor in our kitchen (where she promptly went under the table), gave us a bag of her food and left. We couldn’t get Daphne out from under the table! If we tried to pull her out she would growl and snap at us, so we left her there, put out food and water and waited.

She would stay under the table until we went to bed, then get out, eat her food, drink some water, go in the living room and “do her business” on the area rug and go back under the table. After a week of this, “Miss Thirza” (my mom) was pretty upset to say the least!

I was working night shift at the time and came in from work on that 7 th day feeling pretty frustrated with this animal. So, I sat down in the floor close to the table and said, “We need to talk”. Daphne came out and sat just out of reach in front of me. I said, “You need to make a decision here. You can either go back where you were and be just one of the pack, or you can stay here and be the queen of the house. But I’m telling you, “Miss” Thirza has about had it and is ready to send you back. It’s up to you. If you want to stay here with us, you need to come out from under there, start going outside to do you business and being a companion. If you want to go back, just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s your choice.” Then I went to bed.

That afternoon, Daphne came out when I called her, let me put a leash on her and take her outside. She became a great companion for my mom and stayed with us until her death 10 years later.

Penny

PENNY

We were without a dog and looking for one to keep my mom company as she approached her 90th birthday. I had checked all the shelters but no small dogs at all! Not even in adult dogs (which is what we wanted). So, I began to search online. I ended up talking with a man from Farmington, who had a private shelter. He had a male, miniature pincher that looked cute.

When the man asked why we wanted the dog, I explained it was for my mom as a companion. He said he would bring the dog but he would also bring another that he felt might be more appropriate as an elderly woman’s dog.

We met him in Mocksville at a building he owned and showed his dogs. The pincher came in, ran around us, sniffed a little then ran off to play. The man put him back in his travel crate and brought out a chihuahua mix that was a little shy at first. Then she jumped up on the bench I was sitting on, walked across me to get to my mom, got in her lap, laid down and put her head in the crook of Mom’s elbow. Then she sighed this big sigh, like she was content. My mom said, “Well, I think we’ve found us a dog!” This was her birthday present to herself as it was the week of her 90th birthday.

The poor dog had been through a number of names. The county shelter had named her Peanut but the man with the shelter didn’t like that, so he renamed her Pino. Well, we didn’t like that either. And since she reminded us of a dog my cousin had when we were growing up, we named her after it – Penny.

She tolerated me. I was “allowed” to feed her and take her out on a leash but she was truly my mom’s dog. She was a faithful companion for her until my mom’s death at 93. She even laid on my mom’s hospital bed when she was in Hospice and was just not ever the same after Mom died.

She passed away a year almost to the day after Mom.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:5 NRSV