Unlikely Friendships - Jennifer S. Holland [11]
“They were really rambunctious, flying nonstop around the room,” Laurie says. And while the two pit bulls were relatively calm, the old English bulldog, Brando, “was rough and rowdy himself. Moose would wrestle with the big beast, biting his jowls and muzzle,” she says. “In reply, Moose would steal Bran-do’s toys, sometimes right out of the dog’s mouth, and hide them under the bed. That ferret was a fearless little creature.” The two would play tug-of-war with the dog toys, Brando actually lifting Moose off the ground and swinging him around, the ferret gripping the toy in his jaws. “He loved it; he’d go right back for more,” Laurie says of the flying Moose, whose neck grew thick with muscle from holding on so tightly.
In all the chaos, Winston, one of the pit bulls, was at first terrified of the ferrets. “If he was on the bed and they scrambled up, he would fall off trying to back away from them,” recalls Laurie. But with positive reinforcement, Winston overcame his fear and became the ferrets’ favorite pillow at the end of the day. And Nala, pit bull number two, would follow the smaller animals around trying to lick them, like a coach giving his athletes a wipe-down between their bouts of wrestling.
When Moose became ill and lost the use of his back legs, Laurie’s boyfriend, Jonathan, made him a tiny wheelchair from a shin guard, a piece of wood, and the wheels from a clothesline pulley. Soon the ferret was back to racing around the house and “off road” in the grass outside with Pita, the two chasing and being chased by a trio of dogs ten times their size.
But then, a few months later, it was Pita whose health began to fail, and she turned into a tiny sack of bones, Laurie says. When she began having seizures, Laurie decided to put her “little winsome ball of fluff” to sleep. Before burying the animal, she let Moose see her. “He nosed her, trying to get her up to play. He laid down next to her and rested his head on her neck.” The dogs, too, sniffed at the lifeless creature, uncertain. But their special interest in Moose is what really impressed their owner.
As Laurie later wrote on the website for the Humane Society, where she manages the End Dogfighting campaign, after Pita was gone, the drop in Moose’s once-buoyant spirits was obvious to the canines, who tried to help lift them again. “Our spunky dog Nala licked and nuzzled him relentlessly until he warmed up and playfully clawed and bit her giant muzzle,” she wrote. “The stoic bulldog Brando followed Moose around the house with a watchful eye. And cuddle-loving Winston curled up and napped with the ferret at night.” There was no question in her mind that the dogs, sensing Moose’s distress over Pita, were consoling their friend when he needed them most.
THE END DOGFIGHTING CAMPAIGN
This program, created by the Humane Society of the united States, seeks to educate at-risk youth to the dangers and inherent cruelty of dog fighting, a spectator “sport” in which dogs, usually American Pit Bull Terriers, are placed in a pit to fight one another. Dogs used in these events often die.
{OREGON, U.S.A., 1999}
The Golden Retriever and the Koi
KOI
KINGDOM: Animalia
PHYLUM: Chordata
CLASS: A Ctinopterygii
ORDER: Cypriniformes
FAMILY: Cyprinidae
GENUS: Cyrprinus
SPECIES: Cyprinus carpio carpio
GOLDEN RETRIEVER
Known for its intelligence and affectionate nature, the golden retriever is one of the most popular breeds in the U.S.
Have you ever been entranced as the wind dances over water’s glassy surface and fish move in perfect unison beneath? A nine-year-old golden retriever named Chino found that enchantment in a suburban backyard pond in Oregon a few years back.
The main draw for Chino was Falstaff, the koi—a large, multicolored goldfish related to carp, a species that has been selectively bred in Asia for centuries