Clancy

This is the Webmaster typing. April has been kind enough to turn the front page over to me this month, so that I can share the big news from my home (or the Dachshund Delights Chicago branch office, as it's sometimes known.)

Retirement isn't what it used to be. In the olden days (i.e., when I was young), you spent your working life at one company, then they threw you a party, gave you a gold watch and sent you a pension check every month. These days, instead of throwing you a party, they throw you out the door. And instead of giving you a gold watch, they ask a security guard with a gold badge to watch you and make sure that you don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out.

But Montana tends to be a little bit behind the times in many ways, some of them good. And dignified retirement is still in style at 2 Dogs Long Dachshunds in Power, MT. Says Becky Burguess, talking about her retired sires and dams, "I want them to have a good home – they have given to me, and it's time to have them retire in style."

That's fine in theory, but in practice, my wife and I found ourselves selected (targeted) as the perfect retirement home for a little guy named Clancy. Once a stud dog in Becky's kennels, Clancy had just visited the vet for a couple of well-placed snips and was ready to say goodbye to the girls and settle down somewhere. As Becky described him, "Clancy has always been 'squashy' as I call the ones you just want to pick up and hug tight. Just something about him. We always had our routine down, when I would poop scoop his run, he'd follow at a distance and I'd kind of sing his name then he'd stop and I'd come up and pick him up, hug and kiss him and tell him how very handsome he was and he'd always get a 'face' on him like 'gosh, mom, the other guys are looking' but I knew he loved it because he would follow me everyday til I picked him up."

Now that sounded great, but the thing is that I always figured that the ratio of two dogs to two people was just about perfect. If Clancy had his routine down, so did I. Get up, get two dogs outside (one at a time), feed two dogs, go on about the business of getting ready for work. Dinner time and bed time had their rituals, too, and all those rituals revolved around two dogs. For that matter, two dogs was about as many as could comfortably dog the heels of two people brushing their teeth in a smallish bathroom.

Then my wife asked aloud a question that I had been very careful to ask only in my mind: "Do you think we could give Clancy a good home?" And of course there was the all-important subsidiary question: Could we give Clancy a good home while still being fair to Fred and Ginger? At twelve years old, could they adapt, and should they be asked to?

In the end, we decided that what our household needed was young blood. Then came the news from Becky. While we were waffling with a decision, someone else had expressed interest in the little guy.

For a week we were in limbo. Then came the word: the other person had backed out of the deal. Our family was about to get bigger.

You'll find this tough to believe, but Great Falls, MT is not one of the transportation hubs of America. I wanted to head up there for Dachshund Day, but the best I could do on short notice was a circuitous route that would have led from Chicago to Omaha to Salt Lake City to Great Falls. That would have been eight or nine hours each way, the trip back including a little scared guy in a Sherpa bag.

April stepped in to save the day. She had already booked a comparatively direct Cleveland-to-Minneapolis-to-Great-Falls route, and while she had planned to take Katie and Spencer back home for the celebration, she graciously agreed to let Katie pine away at home and bring Clancy back with her.

I flew to Cleveland to get him on June 20 and brought him to his Forever Home in Chicago on June 21. Everyone met us in the back yard when we returned, and I took Clancy out of the Sherpa and put him down. He squashed himself flat to the ground and wouldn't move. And who could blame him? In Montana, his nearest neighbor was three miles away. In Chicago, his nearest neighbor was on the other side of the fence and was, in fact, already checking him out. A plane flew low overhead on the approach to O'Hare, and the roar of a bus could be heard from the street at the front of the house.

But Clancy is nothing if not resilient. Within a day, he was running around outside like a radio-controlled pet being controlled by a hyperactive child. And we didn't have to worry about the reception he was going to get from his new adopted siblings. Ginger lets him use her crate as a hideaway when things get hectic. And within two hours of his arrival, Clancy was lying on the kitchen rug when Fred came up, cuddled in next to him, and let Clancy use his flank as a pillow.

There are, of course, changes that Clancy has already made in our lives. He is so small next to our two tweenies that we have to be extra careful to watch where we step as we walk around. How small is he? One morning after his breakfast, he walked under his sister Ginger as she finished eating, and she never even interrupted her chewing rhythm.

And the biggest change in our lives? We're already in the market for a bigger bed. If we don't get a new bed by the time the cold weather comes around again, I'm going to get a bit chilly sleeping on the floor while Clancy is warm and toasty under the covers. But I wouldn't begrudge him. You don't have to be around him for very long to love him, and we do.