Time for a bit of comic relief. I’ve shared a couple blogs of life with our dogs with Big Feelings, now I will share the tale of the opposite of that. Sometimes what seems like it should be easy is actually not always easy. I will say that I’ve had multiple socially neutral dogs and they are not simply easy because they don’t struggle with their emotions like their reactive counterparts. They still have their own personalities, their own wants and desires, their own quirks. Kate was a truly neutral dog. She loved everyone and everything, and was loved by everyone and everything. But boy oh boy was she a character.

Kate was a puppy of my first ever Champion show dog, Troy. Troy was one of those walk on water dogs, I’ve had 3 of them, the dogs that just come preloaded easy. Dogs that gel and fit you like a glove. Some people call them heart dogs, but I don’t because I don’t love them any more than the ones that have challenged me, but they just fit you perfectly and that makes everything feel easy. Troy was that, we soared together in the dog world. He was spectacular, but I will save his story for another day, because today we are talking about Kate.

If Kate was a person and had a job it would be comedian. She was comedy gold. She would do things like burp in your face or fart on your foot, right in the middle of some really intense moment. Like for example, when my husband was in rehab I had a breakdown and spent an hour naked crying on the floor after getting out of the tub. I had Butters laid along my back keeping me warm, Ricky sitting by my head, Seamus laying with his head on my legs, all of them concerned and caring and Kate she sat on my feet and after a bit farted so loudly it surprised us all. It made me laugh so hard I got up and out of my misery.

Kate the comedian, Picabo and Ricky looking mistreated 🤣 and happy Baby Butters

Playing a board game, deep in strategy thought, and the golden sitting next to you burrrrpppppp in your ear. She always had a giant smile on her face, always. I don’t think I ever heard her growl. ever. If dogs charged or barked at her, she would stand there with her tail wagging and then walk away. She was ALWAYS hungry, taught her to swim by tossing floating treats for her to get. While she loved swimming she mostly spent all of her time in the water pulling rocks out of the water, the bigger the better, diving herself underwater.

We had big plans Kate and I. Follow in her Daddy’s footsteps to be a show champion, agility star, obedience dog and so on. But before she was 3 years old we nearly lost her before she was diagnosed with a serious auto-immune disease: Immune mediated polyarthritis and polymyositis. Basically her immune system just started attacking all of her body’s joint fluid and muscle fibers deciding they were the enemy. I’ve never spent more money on a dog, it took many years to pay off her credit cards. Multiple specialists completely stumped, radiographs, muscle and nerve biopsies, every blood test known to man, joint taps, you name it, it was probably done, before it was finally diagnosed being such a rare combination of two very rare conditions. The treatment was lifelong low dose oral chemotherapy. She took daily meds that cost at least $120 a month for over ten years. The irony being she was also my longest living golden to make it to almost 14, likely because the daily chemo kept cancer from taking hold.

She had EVERY reason not to be neutral, she lived life with one of the most painful conditions there are. During flare ups her joint fluid basically turned to watery blood instead of the viscous lubricant it should be. Then she would have to go on high doses of Prednisone in addition to her chemo drugs. And then she would become even more ravenous than he usual starving. Thank goodness for most of her years I was a vet tech, because she needed so much care, even at my reduced cost we racked up the debt. Her vet, who was also my best friend, the same one that found us the surgeon who fixed Seamus, adored Kate. He was amazing at fighting to get her a diagnosis and treatement plans, calling vets all over the world to get help with her condition being so rare. And she loved him. During times when I had her at work with me because I thought she was flaring and needed a joint tap to confirm, he would go get her from the kennels when he had a moment even if I was busy, I would walk in the treatment area and there she would be sitting in front of him, no one holding her as he bent her wrists, put needles into her joint to draw out fluid and she would just sit there with her tail wagging the whole time. Then when he was done he would tell her to stay, grab the entire cookie jar off the counter and he would lay a trail of treats that went all around the clinic, like 20-30 treats 😂 then he would say “ok” and off she went hoovering them all up. He (or I) could draw blood from her without any help, take xrays, any kind of treatment she just happily traded for a cookie trail.

She was also my first working neutral dog for reactivity/aggression cases. She was unflappable. After she was in full remission we had the ok to do some agility as long as we kept her in the lower jump height class. She was a no go practice agility dog, it made sense once we knew what was wrong with her why she always hated classes, and would just leave. Before her first illness event that caused the crash where we almost lost her, I had been training her and competing with her in agility. She was so hard to train, she had zero interest (again probably because it was not comfortable we later learned) but at trials she LOVED it. I entered her first trial simply because I was going to be there with my other dogs and she could do everything when she wanted to, but I fully expected I was wasting my money. She won every class. She was like an entirely different dog. It only lasted 30 seconds or so and everyone cheered for her. So after that I just stopped training her and just took her to trials when I went and sure enough she finished her novice and open titles easily winning all her classes. She got the ok to return to agility right before the Golden Nationals and had so much fun as we dropped back down to Novice in the lower jump height division.

Her breed show career had already ended, at a year and a half she had to be spayed as she had cysts all over her ovaries that were causing her all kinds of issues and discomfort. We also abandoned obedience as she had the least amount of tolerance for that bs. Class clown thank you very much. It wasn’t that she didn’t like training or wasn’t smart, she was, she was such a sweet easy going biddable dog, she just had zero interest in repeating anything or doing things that were not really fun and competition obedience was far too stuffy for her. And I am not one who forces anything, so I let go of those ideas. And of course once she was sick and afterward, she only was asked to do things we knew she loved! One of the things she really loved was being a student learner dog, we had a junior handler who wanted to learn how to do agility, so they learned how to trial with Kate. We never moved her beyond Novice with the low jump heights and in the end I think she had like 4 times the required qualifications to move up, but with her health I never wanted to make it harder.

Kate was the best puppy raiser. Any new pups, foster pups and the one and only litter I ever had here, she was always right in the middle, so happy to be the auntie. She raised Ricky, Picabo, Butters and Emily. When she was super sick, Ricky her best pal, would play with her, by picking up her ear and dropping it gently. He would bring her toys and pretend tug with her, she would grab it and he would sound ferocious, he would pretend like they were tugging yet he was not pulling against her at all really. If she let go he would guide it back to her mouth. The same way he played tug with Emily when she was tiny. He was so good at playing to whatever level ability of who he was playing with. During those months she was so weak we had to hold her head up and hand feed her, had to carry her outside and hold her up to go potty. I really didn’t think she was going to make it. Her body ate almost all of her muscles before we were able to get her into remission. You could feel every bone in her body, her head was skin on skull. I am sure people thought it was not humane at times with how far down she went before she recovered. But even during those darkest times she was so happy, always a happy tail, always ready to eat, always willing to try to get up even when she couldn’t. And she did recover, for the next 12 years she was mostly healthy except for the occasionl flare we got very good at spotting early and knocking back with more meds.

Kate had the best eye lashes in the whole world!

I will never not smile when I think of Kate. I’ve never met a sweeter kinder happier sillier dog. I won’t tell you about her end, but I will share about the best day of her life just before it. We knew she in her last days, multiple organs were failing, there was not really anything more that could be done. It was Thanksgiving time and for the dog who liked food more than any other dog ever we decided to set her a place at the dinner table for Thanksgiving and to give her Thanksgiving dinner. All of things not good for dogs. Oh her eyes when I helped her up onto the chair we had covered with cushions to make it easy for her to sit in, pushed the FULL dish of Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, buttered carrots, dinner roll slatered with butter in front of her. She dove in devouring it all, licking the plate clean. Then a full piece of pumpkin pie with whipped cream, which she ate in one bite just incase that was a mistake and we tried to take it back I think. My gosh was she happy. That’s the memory that always comes to my mind first when I think of her, that happy dog inhaling a piece of pie. Farting on my feet.

Sweet Kate 13.5yrs old

Garden buddy, happy to take any stray snap peas off your hands

Also, every photo here is a photo that was taken and uploaded to FB. Sadly most of her photos were all pre-digital and lost in the fire. So this is my reminder to you, that when you post your pets on social media, don’t worry about trends or how they perform, take photos of memories you want to keep forever!

Kate

“I will never have a border collie”