Sweet Annie

Our sweet Annie is 14 1/2 years old.



The Mister and I got her free from an ad in the paper when she was 12 weeks old. We had been married about 4 months. Her full name is Miss Annie Marie, although she is by NO means pure bred or registered. She's half Border Collie and half Blue Heeler. A true cow dog. And sweeter than any other dog you will ever meet.



Miss Annie is smart as a whip! When we first got her and were training her, we would show her something once or twice, and she had it down! Easy peasy to house train. So eager to please. The one thing we worked and worked and worked on - and thought she would never learn - was how to fetch. I could not for the life of me figure out why she was having such a hard time with it when she had learned everything else so quickly! We would throw the ball, and she would run to it, then run in circles around the ball, nipping at it. We had the hardest time getting to her pick the ball up and bring it back! What in the world?

It took us forever to figure it out....she was herding that ball (you know, like herding cattle). Cute girl. It truly is just in her genes. :) Once we realized what she was doing, we bought her one of those big plastic balls like you can buy at the grocery store - like a kick ball, only not as hard? - and we called it her "cow". She would chase and circle and nip and herd that thing endlessly. It was adorable. (She did eventually learn to fetch, and it became one of her all time favorite things. She still loves to play ball so much.)



The day we went to get Annie (from the newspaper ad), I didn't really think much about the fact that she ran to hide under the car and had to be coaxed out with a hot dog. I didn't really think it was strange that she seemed scared when we took her home. I thought it curious, but not overly unusual, that she seemed to cling to me while shying away from The Mister. But as time went on and she didn't really seem to warm up to him, we began to notice that she was also deathly afraid of strangers - especially men.

We began to put two and two together and wonder if she had been abused by her former owners. The vet confirmed that that probably was the case. He said that a puppy's personality is generally cemented by the time they are 8-12 weeks old, and that if we had gotten her earlier she would have grown out of her fear. But since she was 12 weeks old when we got her, she would likely never overcome it. He was right, she never did. To this day she will cower from strangers or even from us if we slightly raise our voice at her. She is petrified of getting in the car, going to the vet, or anywhere she hasn't been at least a dozen times.

And we love her so.

When The Mister and I were first married, we lived in an apartment. It did have a small backyard so I'm not sure why, but rather than leaving Annie out there when we went to work, we made the mistake of leaving her locked up in the bathroom. One time when we had only had her for a few days - or it may have even been the very first day, I don't remember for sure - we came home to find our bathroom destroyed! We had a glass vase sitting on the counter filled with glass marbles. The vase was shattered and marbles were all over the bathroom. Things that had been on a shelf were strewn around the bathroom, and the shelf had been used as a chew toy. She had even chewed or dug a hole in the wall!! What a mess.

Not long after the bathroom episode, Annie came down with parvo and had to be in the hospital over the weekend. We went to visit her on Saturday, and it was so sad. We sat in the little waiting room with other families visiting their hospitalized pets, and then they wheeled Annie out on a little cart. She had an IV connected to her leg, and her foot was all swollen from it. She was So.Scared. and practically threw herself into my arms. When it was time for us to go she fought as hard as she could to get away from the hospital person (I don't know what you call them at a pet hospital?) and just cried and cried. And when The Mister and I walked outside, I cried and cried. It broke my heart. But Annie made a full recovery from parvo and has been the picture of health ever since.

Another time, when Kloe was about to turn 2, we had been sticking birthday candles in a biscuit to let her practice blowing them out. Our back door is just a few steps from kitchen sink, so after "candle practice" I left the back door open and let Kloe play out on the back porch. Suddenly she was screaming and crying hysterically. I went running out to the porch asking, "What happened? What's wrong?"

She sobbed, "Annie ate my birthday biscuit!" :)



And then this little mister came along. He loves Annie more than almost anything else in the world. In fact, she often outscores me on the list of the top 3 loves in his life. :) [#1 being his lovie, Nonnie]



And let me tell you, the feeling is definitely mutual. They are inseparable. Jacob is the one exception to Annie's fear of the male gender. She sticks by his side like glue anytime he is outside. During our Arctic Tundra episode a few weeks ago, we kept Annie in our laundry room most of the time. Jacob would go out there and just lay by her. Just lay there. She was the first thing he asked for every morning and the last hug he gave every night before bed. Oh how he loves that dog.



Last week our Sweet Annie developed an infection in her right eye. When we took her to the vet, she (the vet) discovered that Annie has a prolapsed iris. The iris in her eye has literally slid over to the side of her eyeball. Have you ever heard of such a thing? We weren't able to see it ourselves because her eyes are so dark to begin with, plus she has really bad cataracts which obstruct the view of it. But worse than that, the vet also found a mass growing in Annie's eye. At first she wasn't sure if the mass was a tumor or a mass of infection, but after antibiotic eye drops didn't affect the size of the growth, she decided that we need to have Annie's eye removed.

*sigh*

Poor sweet girl.

The vet says that Annie is already blind in that eye (which we never knew) and so living with only one eye won't really be that big of an adjustment for her. My biggest concern, though, is that she's 14 1/2 years old. I'm worried about how she will handle anesthesia and surgery and recovery. I'm worried about trying to take care of her when she comes home, since she would be home by herself all day. And, I'm worried about Jacob. I think all of this has really shaken him up, realizing just how old she really is and that she won't be with us forever.

*bigger sigh*

Ohhh, this is so hard. I hate it. I keep avoiding calling the vet back to schedule the surgery. Logically I know that putting it off won't make it go away, but making that call is just so hard, you know?

I hate it.

We love you, Miss Annie Marie. Please stay with us a while longer, k?