Above, a freshly groomed Sugar surveys his realm from a perch on the back deck of the home he shared with fellow canines Audrey & Betty and bipeds Li & Phillip. |
Sugar came into my life when he was two years old.
My friend Sandy got him from the
SPCA.
She had seen his picture in
the paper and had decided that he
had to be hers. She and her
daughters named him "Sugaree", after the
Grateful Dead song.
While he loved his new home, he was a border collie -- full of energy and in need of a lot of attention. When left alone, he quickly became bored; when bored, he chewed things (see "Chew Sticks" in the glossary: stuffed animals were his first victims, but he soon raised the ante to include furniture; when he developed a taste for electrical cords, Sandy realized he needed a home in the country and more time and attention than she could then spare. That's where I, conveniently living in Nelson County at the time (1988), came in. Sandy called me and pled Sugar's case. I wasn't interested; I already had two male dogs and no more spare time than anyone else. I compromised, however, and agreed to take Sugar for a weekend. I picked him up one Friday afternoon. By the following Monday, I wasn't going to give him back; we belonged to each other. |
| When I moved back to Charlottesville in
September
1990, Sugar came with me. For the first week, he wanted to go
"home".
Every time we
walked by the car, he wanted to get in. But after a
very short
while, he decided that city living was good. It meant
that he
could be inside the house with me.
When I first moved into my house, I had a rule of not letting the dogs upstairs. I wanted to keep one floor doghair-free. That worked for about eight months or so, until the first thunderstorm. For some reason unknown to me, Sugar was afraid of storms. The first storm in the new house occurred at night. When I woke up in the morning, I heard a tail thumping under the bed. Sugar had crawled underneath the bed at some point during the night and had gotten stuck. With chagrin, he tried to "swim" his way out from under the bed. No luck. So I pulled on his front legs until he was free. |
After that, he figured he could prevail on my soft
heart
and come upstairs. At first, it was only during thunderstorms.
Then, he
started coming up whenever he wanted to be close. He would
tiptoe up the
stairs, so silently that I would not hear
him until he hit a stair near the top that creaked. He would poke
his head around the corner of the study (you have to walk through the
study on the way to the bedroom),
see that I was watching, duck his
head down, and walk
quickly to the bedroom. He figured if he
couldn't
see my eyes, then I couldn't see him. When he thought he
was safe, he
would come wagging into the study, rest his chin on my
thigh, sigh,
and go to sleep on the floor next to me. If it was
thundering out or
if there were fireworks in Scott Stadium, he would
wedge himself
under the desk. |
| Being in town also meant that he had much less exercise. In
Nelson County, he ran with the other two dogs about three hours a
day. I
forgot to take this into account and continued giving him
the same amount of food.
Suddenly, he was fat: he gained 20 pounds in about six months. So I put him on a diet, and he lost all the fat he gained. But it also meant that he would forever be a hungry dog. He knew that Audrey didn't always eat her food, so he would wait until I left the room and eat hers. I started picking up her food if she didn't eat it right away. But occasionally, I forgot. Several times I caught him mid-chew and all I had to do was say his name. Sugar. And he would open his mouth and the food would fall back into the bowl. |
(From left to right): Sugar,
Audrey,
|
 |
 |
| For those people who thought Sugar was always by my side, he wasn't if deer were in the vicinity. As soon as he picked up the scent of a deer, he was off like a shot, with Audrey yipping behind him the whole way. She didn't always know what he had seen, but she was a willing accomplice. Once Betty came on the scene, she joined the chase, too, and the three would take off and come dragging back, tongues hanging to the ground. |
| Sugar lived
with me for eleven years. In that time,
he came to know my
habits, moods, and movements.
He knew when it was
time to go out (I had to go outside with him if it was
raining; he
didn't want to get wet unless I did), when he
would get a treat,
when I was going on a trip,
and when he could go with me.
Nothing delighted him more than to be with me (and nothing bummed him out more than to be left behind). |
Sugar, on April 10, 1999 |
Those last few
weeks were
tough, when
Audrey and Betty got to go on walks,
but he had to stay home.
But he never complained. He wasn't the type of dog to whine, bark in the middle of the night, chew on possessions, get on furniture, or pee in the house. He was solid. Loyal. Smart. Patient. And a one-person dog. I was lucky to be that person. |
| Postscript. Since Sugar died,
Audrey
and
Betty
have decided that they
now need to be next
to me and are trying to take up his space....
They now sleep next to my office chair while I work, so closely that I cannot roll on the wheels without fear of running over one of them. May 10, 1999 From left to right: Sugar, Audrey, and Betty snuggle up to Li. |
|
Check
out
Sugar's best
buds,
Audrey &
Betty
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