Princess Rosie

You talkin' to me?

                                                                                               Okay, NOW I require your attention.

Rosie was my little heart dog. An Italian Greyhound who charmed everyone who met her within seconds. We called it 'taking souls', but 'taking hearts' is probably more accurate; the speed with which she captured total strangers was almost spooky. Rosie was a puppy-mill product, an impulse buy from a mall pet store. One of the 'puppies in the window', and when I wrested her from the Italian Greyhound hell she dwelled in, she seemed to know I had rescued her. Unsupervised toddlers are not a good idea around any dog, but they're terrifying to IGs. The enthusiastic pats a Golden may ignore are painful to a dog with little padding, and tea-kettle screams don't help one bit. It takes a lot to make an IG leave home, but Rosie crossed a major 4 lane in the dark on a frigid January Friday night. No dog of mine would have made it in a million years, and she was coal black at that age. Wandering in to a doctor's office, the local vet recommended me to the receptionist, knowing I had IGs. Rosie had so obviously been terrorized, and cringed pitifully. She was also possibly the homeliest Iggy I'd ever seen. So narrow in the chest you wondered how she breathed, elbows like wings, long and scrawny. She never lost that build, but somehow she became beautiful. Outgoing with strangers, to the end of her long life, if you called her name, her first thought was to run the opposite direction.

  I took her home and vowed I'd never let her return to where ever she'd come from. A few days later the vet called to say that her owners had called around and been told where she was. I hid her in the basement for days, until the stalking wore me down and I knew I had to return her. It broke my heart to give her back, and the look on her face told me she'd already bonded with me. I left after telling them if they Ever wanted to sell her, to call me. A few months later they did, and for $150 she was mine. When I went to re-rescue her she was nowhere in sight, but as I sat on the sofa, I felt a tiny touch on the back of my neck, as Rosie crept up behind me. She must've remembered me and seemed to know I'd come for her. From that day she hardly left my side for 14 years.

Never an alpha dog, nevertheless she could get her own way. Many times when the other pups occupied prime spots on the couches, Rosie would get up and run to the door, inciting the others to follow. They never seemed to notice when they met her coming back as she hopped nimbly and a little smugly into the best spot which was now open for her. The first time we saw this we looked at each other in disbelief, but when the trick was repeated we had to accept that Rosie knew exactly what she was doing, and she gently manipulated us with the same little paws. We miss her every day.