Yesterday, I witnessed conclusive proof that dogs have very strong emotions and memories. I was cleaning the bathroom when this proof was offered, and it was an amazing thing to witness. In my bathroom is a small shelf unit where I display some knickknacks. On the top of the shelf is a little red dachshund statue with a collar hanging over his shoulders. The statue was a gift from my husband one Christmas, and when our Sausage Dog passed away, it became home to his collar.
Sausage was the first dachshund I owned as an adult. He was already old when we got him. He had been found at the York County dump and taken to the nearby vet office of Dr. Leonard. I called that office after learning that the 3 year old dachshund from the paper had already found a new home. My father-in-law suggested I call local vets to see if any of them knew of a dachsie who needed a home. I think the receptionist at Seaford Veterinary Hospital fell out of her chair when I asked about a dachshund. Sausage had been brought in the day before. My husband and I had agreed that I could get a young, spayed female. Sausage was an old, fully-intact male. But our son and I had gone to the office “just to take a look.” We sat down on the floor and they brought him in. He was so pathetic. This little 8-pound bag of bones crawled right into my lap. As Logan reached out to pet him, Sausage licked his hand. We were in love.
Dr. Leonard explained that she still had to run an ad in the paper for 10 days on the off chance that he had been lost and not thrown away. I asked if we could please foster him. She’s a real professional, and she knew that there were many hurdles yet to cross. ”Mrs. Claxton, I think that he will be much happier at your house than locked in a cage at a vet’s office, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. This dog has at least one, maybe two, ruptured disks in his back. He might have heart worms or other parasites. He’s a very old dog. I am pretty sure that his owner decided he wasn’t wanted anymore and just tossed him in a dumpster, but there is a chance that someone could come forward to claim him. I doubt it, but it could happen.” I assured her that we would be able to handle any of those outcomes, and that we didn’t want to commit to more than the ten days anyway. We needed to see if he was a good fit in our home.
When we got him home, Michael was none too thrilled that I had brought home a dog who was so opposite to our agreement, but he too admitted that Sausage was very sweet. And who could turn their backs on a dog that had nearly starved to death in a dump? The 10 days came and went. His blood test came back negative for heart worms and parasites. He learned how to bark. One day we came home to find him upstairs–something he’d never been able to manage before. (He never could come down once he’d gotten up, with that back of his.) He was a great dog. His teeth were so rotten that he developed a heart murmur, and our vet recommended that we forgo neutering at his age. She didn’t think he could make it through the anesthetic.
We’d had Sausage for about 9 months when I started twisting Michael’s arm for another dachsie. I searched through photos and descriptions on rescue sites, and eventually contacted Coast to Coast Dachshund Rescue (www.c2cdr.org). There was a local rescuer who came out to visit us and inspect our home. She was impressed that our son–only 5 at the time, was so gentle with our sweet old pup. Cindy said, “I have a puppy who isn’t on the website. It is very rare that I get puppies like this, but she was born with an inguinal hernia, and the breeder asked me to find a good home for her. She has a great pedigree, but she can never be bred. You won’t get her papers. Are you interested?” We agreed to meet her. Cindy brought her over the next day. She was a tiny little black dynamo–just under 3 pounds–with just the tiniest reddish-brown markings in all the right places. We named her Bangers.
Sausage took to her right away. From day one, Sausage seemed younger and peppier, as if her energy was contagious. She loved the sneak attack, running full-speed across the room and smashing into him, rolling him over. She may have been small, but she thought she was the biggest dog ever born. They were quite a team for the next two years. Sausage’s last two years.
We brought his body home from the vet, and we let her sniff him. She knew he was gone. We buried him and planted an azalea bush over his grave. We kept his collar, and anytime we took it down, she would come running. She wanted that collar. She would sniff it and hold it in her mouth, and she never wanted to give it up once she had it. He’s been gone for 4 years now. Which brings me to yesterday.
The statue of Sausage sits on top of the little shelf unit in the bathroom with the collar hanging around it’s shoulders. Since it is on top of the shelves, it gets a bit dusty, and yesterday was my day to clean it. I was very careful to take that collar down quietly, putting my hand around the tags so that it wouldn’t make any noise. But Bangers heard it anyway, and she was at the foot of the ladder in seconds. Curious, I decided to hold that collar for her to sniff it, just to see what she would do. She was immediately whimpering for it. I put it on the floor. She grabbed it with her paws, sniffing it. She tried to put her nose through it like she wanted to put it on, but it was too small to fit over her head. She crammed it into her mouth and started looking for places to hide it.
I called my husband in to watch her. He tried to take it from her. She growled . Bangers is not a growler, even when we take her food dish away before she’s finished. She might growl in play, but this was not that kind of growl. I went back to cleaning, figuring that there was no point in taking it back until the shelf and the statue had been washed. About half an hour later, she was still carrying that collar around in her mouth. I tried to take it. No dice. I tried to pull it away from her. No dice. I tried picking her up and holding her with her head tilted down. She was not letting go. I tried pulling it out of her mouth. I lifted her back paws a half-inch off the ground and she still didn’t let go. I picked her up again and took her to the kitchen. I held a treat next to her nose. I could see the wheels turning in her brain, trying to figure out how she could take the treat and still hold onto that collar. She pondered the problem for more than a minute before she let go of the collar to take the treat.
The collar was so wet from being in her mouth that I had to wrap a paper towel around it to get some of the saliva out of it. I threw the paper towel in the bathroom wastebasket. Bangers was at my heels and under my feet the entire time I was carrying that collar, and she sat whining and whimpering, looking up a the statue and collar for quite some time. Then she turned her attention to the trash can. She could smell that paper towel in there. While I finished wiping down the mirrors and sinks, she went back and forth between sniffing the trash and whimpering for the collar. She was depressed for the remainder of the afternoon and evening.
We have other collars in the house that don’t interest Bangers at all. I am convinced that the collar in question still smells like Sausage to her sensitive little nose. Smelling, and maybe tasting, his collar brings back memories from their time together. It might not be scientific to draw conclusions from one dog’s behavior, but I’m not a scientist. Bangers has proven to me beyond all shadow of doubt that dogs are capable of love and grief, and they remember that love and grief even years later.
