Love Pets? Read These Heart-Warming Pet Stories

Bacchus: the water-shy dog

By Mary Jaksch

Have you ever had a pet that was special?

I’ve had pets all my life.They’ve been like family members.

It started with Sootie, a stray kitten I brought home when I was six years old. She gave birth to her first litter in my bed (with me beside her under the cover holding a torch.)

Later we had Nana, a Newfoundland dog weighing over a hundred pounds.  One day I took her downtown to a bank where she slid and slipped on the polished floor. In protest, Nana lay down in the middle of the bank – and refused to get up.

In the end, I had to make an undignified exit, dragging this  huge, black, flopped-on-the-ground dog behind me like a sack of coals … with customers agape and tellers agog.

As soon as emerged from the bank, Nana jumped up and started wagging her tail as if to tell me how much fun we had just had in the bank … yeah right.

Here are some heart-warming pet stories from readers

Bacchus – the water-shy German Shepherd (by Lauren Thomas)

I had the good fortune of having the sweetest – and smartest – German Shepherd ever! His name was Bacchus. Bacchus loved water. He went crazy over it. You would have thought it was a T-Bone steak or something. The funny part was, though, Bacchus didn’t know how to swim. Or, more accurately, he didn’t know that he knew how to swim.

Bacchus and I lived in Ojai, California, and we would take walks out Creek Road. Creek Road, as the name implies, has a creek. I decided to try a little experiment. For weeks I walked with Bacchus out Creek Road and we would go to the creek to play. I wanted to see if I could show him that he really DID know how to swim.

I spent hours throwing sticks in the water for him to retrieve – I’d start close to shore and eventually thrown them further out to see if I could lure him out over his head. Bad bad me!

You could see his brow furrow at times because he was really into the stick game, but it was almost as if you could see his brain thinking, “Hmm – this feels risky, I’m about to be in deep water here. But damn – I want that stick! What to do?”

In spite of his apparent caution, on occasion Bacchus accidentally did find himself over his head and had to swim. He would scurry to shore in order to recover from the trauma and the gradual luring would begin all over again.

The donkey that come in from the wild (by Roberta Frederick)

The donkey who came in from the wild

For many years Wild Girl often came here, wandering in from out of the desert that is the Joshua Tree National Park. She’d come in after sunset and stay until dawn visiting with our mules and horses. No one seems to know how she wound up in the Park.

In 1998 during the El Nino Year with its rich grasses, she foundered terribly. We had not seen her for weeks when she slowly hobbled into our place, ill and very lame. We loaded her into a stock trailer and drove her to our equine vet for treatment. She became much improved although she was always plagued with a chronic condition that would flare up from time to time requiring treatment.

We never really tried to tame her, she was already fairly old when she decided to call us her family. We let her roam free on our property figuring that free roaming exercise was better for her anyway.

I was able to put her in a stall in the barn to halter her when it was time for our farrier to trim her feet. That, and an occasional scratch on the withers was about all the human contact she tolerated. She enjoyed spending time with our stock. She would often initiate games of play with our huge Mammoth Donkey, Jubal.

It was quite a sight to see, Wild Girl running and bucking on the outside perimeter of the arena and Jubal inside, following and imitating her every move. This past winter was a hard one for her, even being kept warm and dry inside the barn. She was very old and it seemed to us her time was near. She crossed the Rainbow Bridge April 24, 2010.

Cosmo – the hungriest little dog ever (by Barbara Hammond)

Mo: the hungriest dog ever

The first 5 months of Cosmo’s life weren’t ideal for a puppy. His 1st family hadn’t considered how busy everyone was with school, work, sports etc. and how that would limit his time with them. As a result he was spending, on average, 18 hours a day in a crate and they realized he would be better off with another family.

We are so grateful they did the right thing.

Cosmo came into our life like a cyclone of love and energy finally free! His time alone had stunted his growth emotionally, intellectually and apparently gastronomically.

The boy was an eating machine and nothing was safe! He could wipe out a cheese tray in mere seconds. His favorite was goat cheese.

We spend a lot of time at the beach and our other dog, Duffy, loved the water. He would dive into the waves and chase the seagulls with a huge smile on his face. Cosmo wasn’t so keen on the water. He would scratch in the sand for morsels of crab or anything else he could eat. You always knew he wasn’t going to wander far.

One day when we got to the beach and let them off their leashes Cosmo took off like a shot! I began chasing him and yelling for him to come back. He got about 4 blocks away and stopped on a dime. I caught up and started laughing hysterically. Someone had strewn pieces of bread on the beach for the gulls and Cosmo smelled it 4 blocks away.

That boy lived to eat!

Teaching cats to jump (by Maureen Mavrinac)

Teaching Indi to jump

I remember moving into a new apartment with our cats, Indi and Sherman. It was a large loft space with lots of hanging ductwork for heating and cooling, and large windows extending to the ceiling letting in lots of morning sun.

Access to the ductwork was via a couple of ledges high above the kitchen cabinets. Because the building had formerly been a factory it was cavernous.

After coming from a more traditional home, prior to our arrival at this “factory building apartment”, I thought that our cats would need a little tender loving help in letting them know how to jump onto the window sills that were at least three feet off the floor.

I spent time holding the cats, one at a time, and placing them onto the bed and then the window sill, saying, “Here, sweetie, this is how you get up here.” Picture me play “hopping the cats” to show them how to jump!

I was so concerned that they would pine away on the floor of this high ceilinged space unable to enjoy their sunbaths. Shortly afterward, as we were about to leave the apartment to run errands, we did our customary “head count” of the cats.We found Sherman, lounging on the bed.

But Indi was nowhere to be found.

More frantic opening of cabinet doors, and looking under furniture followed. Suddenly, we heard a faint “meow”, and looked skyward. There atop a ledge overlooking the kitchen, right next to the ductwork like a high wire artist sat Indi, looking smug and proud. We snapped a picture, and now as she ages to a graceful fifteen, we look upon those days as the time she taught us how high her talents went!

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Thanks to all the readers who sent in pet stories. Please share more stories in the comments. I’ll publish the best ones in a follow-up post, ok?