The Story of Bindi Jo
Bindi Jo is a dog I mention a lot but I've never told her real story before. While we were fostering for the first all-breed rescue, we fostered for ridgeback rescue at the same time. We especially chose mixes of ridgeback and something at that time, because we would evaluate their "ridgebackness" and decide if they had enough in them to satisfy the folks who really wanted a ridgeback, and because so many dogs are mistaken for them, many times we would find they were more easily adopted through the group that catered to folks looking for just a nice dog of any breed. I should take a moment to explain a ridgeback ridge. They are NOT when the dog's hair is standing up. Here is a good picture:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/imag...i=11o0klce8&sigb=13cepk4f7&.crumb=/jlfCb3fWyw
Holy cow, what a long link, but that is a great picture of one. This is a permanent change in the hair on the middle of the back, nothing like when a dog raises its hackles. But people who have never seen one often think their dog has a ridge. And then to further complicate the matter, some ridgebacks are born without ridges (like my foster Henry), those are harder to determine ridgebackness.
In any event, we got one of those calls, there was a dog in a shelter about four hours north that was "ridgeback mix" and needed to be moved, she had been with a second dog and when the second dog got adopted, she was not "doing well" in the shelter, needed a foster home. That how shelter folk describe it when the dog is going nuts being caged. They described her as "dobie and ridgeback".... Hah! Now that we have had a real dobie-back (Murphy) we know she is not that.
This was when we had already gotten the diagnosis that Sheena was terminal, she had both osteosarcoma and advanced arthritis, she was essentially on hospice and Hubby cried, literally, every day. It was one of the worst times for him I can remember. He and Sheena had a relationship you seldom see, and Sheena was a type of dog you seldom see. About the only dog you guys could relate it to would possibly be OFS's Ti, she understood sentences. But Hubby and Sheena were literally joined at the hip and she was dying despite being our "million dollar dog". We knew there would never, ever, be another dog like her. Their COULD not be another dog like her, our emotions would not take it.
We had just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and because we were planning on moving to the mountains, Hubby had just replaced my old van with a beautiful little subaru outback, it was a sweet one in white with all the bells and whistles that come on cars, and I had picked out the color myself and then he surprised me by actually getting it (still miss that car, it got wrecked). We were dying to take it on its first long distance trip and equipped it with one of those dog-guards that keeps them back in the back-back part of the vehicle. It was sweet. Little did we know the dog has to ride on Hubby's hip or has a spaz.
So on a bright sunshiny day, we take a drive through the country to go pick up a dog named "Cujo" from a shelter in Shelton. That should have been an omen.
Or perhaps the yipping, whining, shaking mess of a dog that drooled and yipped and cried the whole way home (we figured out now that she thinks my husband is getting away from her if he is in the front of the car and she in the back) *SD whispers in Kai's ear, who is listening to this story "She is crazy" and makes a circle in the air next to her ear to indicate mixed-up brains.
The shelter was a beautiful place staffed by volunteers and after a tour, Hubby and I have forevermore wanted to create a place just like that, if we ever won the lotto. It had been a house on a big lot, and the house was used for all the volunteer activities and kennels had been built encircling the property.
They finally brought us out the "ridgeback mix" named Cujo, who was bucking and straining at the leash, trying to get to......Hubby, who she loved at first sight. I am tolerated.
She is a 40-pound dog (ridgebacks are usually between 80-100) and she is black and tan.....like a rottie, or a MIN PIN!) But there on her back is a perfect ridgeback ridge, and the shape of her head has that distinct shape. While we'd like to have her DNA tested to find out the other half, 1/2 of this dog is ridgeback, we debate and joke about the other half. It can't be dobie! Lately I've been telling Hubby rat terrier. But the dog saw Hubby and the rest was history. We could just not call a dog Cujo, so we kept the "Jo" and added Bindi, after Steve Ervin's daughter. So anyhow, we get this dog home and she is a certified nut case, 100 percent.
Now, you must imagine we have had quite a few dogs fall in love with us....why did Bindi Jo's love make a difference? Well, it was partly the history that came with her. We were told that she and a smaller dog were discovered running wild and skinny by neighbors, so they investigated the house of her owner, and he apparently had died some time earlier and the dogs were starving, but she stayed with the body. Her owner was found to have died of cancer. So Bindi and Hubby seemed like a pair, cancer, that horrible disease, robbed them of their beloveds and made them a little crazy at the same time.
Right around this time Sheena actually died. This was a very dark time for us, for Hubby especially, but there was little Bindi, insinuating her little nose into everything, tucking herself under my husband's arm, insisting on being taken with him whereever he went and she is so small, she can actually go. Sheena was so big and Bindi so small, it wasn't like she was trying to replace her, she was trying to comfort him, and fits where Sheena did not. To this day, despite being afraid of thunderstorms and fireworks and gunfire, Bindi Jo is fiercely protective, licks our wounds, and seems to know when anyone is sad or ill and comes to comfort them, knows when Hubby is feeling his epilepsy or me my Meniere's. She allows no harm to come to anyone, in her own weird little way. It I try to massage Hubby's NECK, she thinks I'm strangling him and tries to stop me. The dog is 100 percent devoted to Hubby, and even seems to know when he is on the way home, don't ask me how she knows. I can't let her out front at 4:00 or she will head off down the road, looking for him. And just like from the very beginning, I am tolerated. But she eventually pretty much filled the giant hole left in Hubby's heart left by Sheena and while Bindi Jo will never be larger than life to us, she still will always be 100 percent our dog.
While I love his new deck, for my money I would have just painted the whole thing, that paint was so nice. The house is kind of a dusky brown so the sandstone painted cement really popped next to the deck. It is so nice that someone in the family has such a wonderful home for entertaining and enjoys it!
