** Special Bonus Episode**

This a special bonus episode. Not part our main "too be continued" story,  but it does play into the over all story.

This was my dog "Goober". He was another good friend. Granted he was no Falcor, (in fact he was one of the dumbest dogs I've ever known) but he was my buddy.

I watched his Mom give birth to him. So I knew him his entire life. His Mom is a A.K.C. Samoyed husky and his Dad was a traveling dog( I believe he was a black lab because Goober had 2 black litter mates and they all had webbed feet.).

Not only was he my dog, he was my Mom's Granddog. He even lived at my Mom's house a few years out his life even when I didn't. Other times when we both lived elsewhere, Mom would bring us "care packages" containing a pound of bologna for me and 5lbs. of left over pot roast for Goober. (Sorry Mom but I ate most of the roast although he had lots of snacks from it.)

I could ( and likely will later,) tell you stories about him from him jumping out of Mom's car window at stop light to meet a new girlfriend by jumping  in another car's window 5 cars back, to him burying chicken bones in my roommate's mattress because he was mean to him.

But this story is about him pulling. Being a "husky" he loved to pull. I'd take him for a bike ride and never have to peddle. He broke every rope or chain he was put on when trying to tie him outside. Breaking these chains meant he would run away often. Not really running away as much as going exploring. Chasing after him was the worst thing you could do because then it was a game. The only way to get him home was to simply pull up next to him in the car and open the door. The only thing he liked better than exploring was a good ol' fashioned ride in the car. Eventually  I put him on a 3/8" thick tow chain meant to pull cars out of a ditch. It weighed more than 10 lbs.

In the late '80's early '90's I was doing a lot of " couch surfing". Which is to say, I wasn't really homeless I just didn't have a stable place to stay (or really even want one). At one time I ended up staying at Sandi's house sleeping on her couch. Goober stayed there with us. He even had his tow chain attached to a tree outside. He loved being outside.

Our yard was weird in that our driveway went along the side of the house and we shared it with the efficiency behind us. In the backyard it lined up with driveway of the dry cleaner on the street behind us. So a lot of people used our drive as a short cut out of our neighborhood to the main roadway that the dry cleaners was on. Goober took great pride (as much as a dumb dog could) in guarding our little side yard and barking at every cat or any traffic that happened though.

One day Goober wanted out bad. Usually I would put him on his leash and attach his leash to the tow chain. This day his leash was nowhere to be found. I looked high and low it wasn't where we kept it, or anywhere else. But he really wanted to go. So I took him out without his leash. I hooked his collar directly to the tow chain and went back in.

Then the unthinkable happened. I can still hear the blood curdling yelp. Goober was in pain and a lot of it. I bolted out of the house and sprinted the 20 feet over to where Goober was lying. Not even 10 seconds had lapsed since he called out. I looked up and down the drive thinking he had been run over, but there was no cars in sight. There's no way I could of missed a car either. There was fence between the dry cleaners driveway and ours. You had to slow down and thread the needle through the narrow opening. The other direction was our street that dead ended at our driveway and the nearest intersection was 70 yards down the block. No way I missed a car. Yet Goober lied there motionless. I dropped to my knees cradling Goober's head in my hands. His eyes  looked up at mine. He was breathing but there was no other movement. I checked him over there no cuts or scrapes anywhere on him. I was totally freaking out. Sandi and her boyfriend Mike were with me by now.

We decided that we had to get him to a vet. It was a Sunday evening around 7 or 8 P.M. His normal vet was closed. We had to take him to the emergency vet clinic 10 miles away. We loaded him up in the car with Mike driving, Sandi riding shotgun Goober and I in the backseat. My niece Alexis stayed with our neighbors and friends in the  efficiency out back.

I feared Goober would bite me from pain or shock when I picked him to get him in the car. Instead it was nothing. He didn't growl, or bark, even whine. I knew he was in bad shape.

Mike drove like a madman, doing up 70 mph blowing the horn and flashing his lights as he wove in and out of traffic like he was an ambulance driver. I was scared to death and grateful at the same time.

We arrived at the vet's in no time. I carried him in and the tech on duty ushered us into an exam room instantly. The vet checked him over looking for snake bites, doing x-rays and running a whole battery of tests. She found nothing. By now it was close to one o'clock in the morning. We left him there for observation.

Three days passed with no improvement.  He was paralyzed from the neck down. He would eat and drink. But he had to be cleaned from his own waste. This was no kind of life for a would be sled dog.


At this point I made the most difficult decision of my life to date. We put Goober to sleep that day. I held him as the vet gave him an injection and he drew his final breath. I had watched being born, I had watched him die. I knew him his entire life.

We still don't know what really happened to my buddy that day. I suspect that he saw a cat or something in his yard and went after it. Being used to having his leash on the end of his chain, he thought he had 3 feet more to run. Also the nylon leash had some give and stretch to it to absorb the shock. A 10 lbs tow chain however had no give and stretch. I think he ended up horizontally hanging himself. either breaking his neck somehow that the vet couldn't find or causing nerve damage that wouldn't show up on anything short of a MRI.

Whatever happened that day I blame myself. I have never put a dog on chain since.

This experience from 20 years ago still haunts me enough that it plays into my plan of my new found pursuit of happiness today.

I'll try to tie all this together this weekend. Please stay tuned...