Laddie is an 8 year old Shetland Sheepdog. I got him in March of 1996 - through the New Jersey Shetland Sheepdog Rescue Society. His previous owner, an 84 year old lady, had been in failing physical and mental health. Finally she just could not care for herself or her two dogs anymore and she went to a nursing home. The other dog, a female Sheltie, had already been adopted by the time I arrived - but I fell in love with Laddie at first sight. It didn't help matters any when he licked my face. :-) He went home with me that day.

The above was written in early November, 1996 - just as I entered Laddie in the Fall '96 Virtual Dogshow. I hadn't quite completed Laddie's story yet when the winners were announced on November 30th. Laddie won Reserve Best in Herding Group, Rescue Variety! I was so elated, and was going to finish the web page and include the ribbon GIF, AND make a real ribbon to hang from his collar. This page was going to be constantly updated with new pictures, etc.

But only five days later Laddie was gone. He was shot dead by a bunch of drunk young men who thought that shooting a couple of dogs would be "fun". They never knew Laddie's background, or how many people had loved this dog. They never knew Laddie was known to people he'd never met before - people on the Internet who'd seen his picture in the dogshow and my pages. All they saw was a target.

I've continued with Laddie's story below. Unfortunately it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

It took a little while for Laddie to adjust to the change. First his owner had gone, then the other dog had been taken away, and now he was in an entirely new place. It was probably a bit much for Laddie to handle in the space of just a week. He paced back and forth in my small apartment and occasionally went to wait by the door, as if he was certain he was only a guest and he'd have to be leaving soon. Nevertheless, he would occasionally follow me around the apartment - at a "safe" distance. At other times he seemed to prefer the kitchen when I was anywhere else in the apartment, and a spot by the door when I was in the kitchen. But with patience and a lot of petting and letting him explore as he wanted to he got over his shyness with me and we went for the first of many walks in the neighborhood.

He loved our walks together, could wear you out with a tugtoy or a tennis ball, and absolutely *adored* being rubbed on the sides of his face. He hated sqeaky toys, and whenever he was doing something he shouldn't, all I had to do was squeeze a squeaky rubber ball in his direction and he was chastised. He could beg to be petted by simply wandering up to you and ungently SHOVING his head under your arm and then staring up at you. And he could be stubborn too. If he'd decided you'd had enough TV and really needed to do something more wholesome like play ball with the DOG, he'd get in your field of vision and bark-whine-grumble scold you. Or he'd stare at you so intently, as if he was trying his DARNDEST to communicate with you telepathically, and he just couldn't figure out why you weren't getting it!!

I was only in New Jersey briefly, just less than a year. When I moved back down to Houston, Texas to finish my degree at University of Houston, Laddie came to stay with my best freind here in LaVernia for the four months I'd be at school Here he'd have company - another dog and a cat to play with so he wouldn't be bored and lonely until I'd finished with school and had a full-time job.

Laddie absolutely LOVED it out there. It was 10 acres, fenced in, so he could run around to his heart's content - something I hadn't been able to let him do in New Jersey, where he was always on the leash - even in the small meadow near home. The horses didn't mind Laddie at their feet, and he would run around at a GALLOP everytime he was outside. He loved to run around me in a circle, then slightly ahead of me, then come dashing back to grab my ankle or foot with his mouth, then circle around again, run ahead, come back....

For an indoor city dog, he took to country living with gusto. Whenever he was let out of the house, he'd run around - sometimes stopping to chew sticker-burrs out of his paws - avoiding the cactuses, and generally behaving as if he'd been here all his life. Except for our Southern Rains. Poor Laddie never quite got used to the gully-washers we have down here, and every time one would storm through, he'd pace around the house, then come shove his head under my arm and sit there shivering uncontrollably until the storm passed. As the months went by he was just starting to get used to them.

He'd follow when we'd ride around the pasture on horseback, then sit in the shaded porch looking more content than I'd ever seen him. I considered looking for a *house* to rent - one that had a fenced backyard - rather than an apartment, because I wanted a garden very badly, and he would have loved having a place where he could run around and chase a ball off the leash.

He had company too. Marty, my freind's dog, was not very pleased to see another dog at first, but he and Laddie worked out their differences, and Marty figured out that Laddie was my dog and not a permanent resident. (A big point of concern for Marty-dog. He loves his mama... :-) And they would play tug of war with tug ropes and chew toys. When I'd come to LaVernia each weekend from Houston, Laddie would sleep with me in the small guest bedroom, and Marty with my freind in the master bedroom. In the morning though, as soon as one was out of the room, the other was sniffing under the door, and scratching to be let out of the bedroom. Then, LOOK OUT! It was the sound of a herd of buffaloes as they thundered around, running from room to room and scaring the cat as they ran by with chew toys in thier mouths.

Savanah didn't have much use for Marty-dog, but when Laddie arrived she scoped him out the first few days. Then she sauntered up to him, rubbed all over his front ruff of fur and purred like anything. As soon as he looked down to see what was going on, she swatted him across the nose a couple of times with her front paws. (Declawed) It was like that ever since. It was HYSTERICAL to see this cat hop off the sofa, wander across the floor to a dog that started whining as soon as he realized what was about to happen. He stood stock-still as she rubbbed and rubbed and rubbed, but then he just couldn't STAND it any longer, and he'd move. And she swat him, and he'd sulk off to the other room. Women. :-)

*sigh* Marty had a habit out getting out from the back yard back in Houston and wandering the neighborhood. A suburb is a nice place for a dog that likes to do that, since people are sometimes nice to "strays" and there's lots of interesting things to see. In LaVernia though, he got out only once, coming back the same night instead of being gone for days. And never he didn't take off again for such a long time. In fact, he'd stand by the door and wait to be let back in and didn't even look interested in digging under the fence. We couldn't figure it out, and suspected that he'd either met up with a wild pig or coyote, or just found the quiet country side too boring.

But on December 5th around 10pm, when they were let out breifly to go pee, Marty and Laddie both slipped through the gate and took off when noone was looking. Around 10:30pm or so, Marty limped back but Laddie was nowhere in sight. Laddie was eventually found on the side of a small dirt road leading to the property. Both dogs had been shot, and their collars had been taken.

My freind had to call me in the early morning hours to tell me the news. We cried on the phone till 2am. I was a wreck all early Friday morning - I couldn't go to sleep until 4am, and even then I stayed awake until 6am, unbelieving. I didn't sleep long - I woke up at 11am. For a while I just wanted to stay in bed and just not do *anything*.

But I got up. And I finished a contract web job, and then went to pick up some of my freind's old stuff from her parent's like I'd arranged to do a few days before. Her mom and I talked for a while too. I didn't start my drive there until 6pm (I usually go at 3pm) - I just couldn't stay in Houston until Saturday, even though I knew the drive would be tough. I had three hours during that drive to try and think of *something* else other than what had happened, but that's ALL I thought about. The worst part about it was the WHY - WHY did someone shoot him? What happened?

I met my freind at an outdoor cafe after she got off from work and we talked for an hour out there in the cold - neither one of us was very hungry at first. But those first three hours in San Antonio were what I needed. When we finally got home, Marty greeted us at the door. His leg would be okay, but he was limping for a while, and bandaged up so much he looked like he had a blue T-shirt on. I had to help flush his wound with a solution to keep it from getting infected. (I held his head while my freind injected the solution so that it would flow all the way through the wound, from bullet entrance to bullet exit...) Not fun for Marty - but he knew we were helping him. The poor dog would scream at the top of his lungs in pain, but still wave his tail at us afterwards. :-( :-( :-( He couldn't bend down to get at his food bowl, so we had to put the bowls on a small box and he chowed down then finally, waving his tail everytime he looked at us, like he was grateful we'd done that so he could get to the food and water.

We went to bed around 3am, and I left the door open to the room in case the cat wanted to come in - I would've liked the company. In the morning Marty came into the room, and shoved his head over the pillow to give me a lick on the cheek as I woke up.

We started to piece together a better guess as to what happened. It appeared that both the dogs were victims of what is called "roadside hunting" - a bunch of drunk young men with nothing better to do will drive around and shoot anything that moves. (I.e. catch deer in their headlights and shoot them, or coax pets out of yards with food and then shoot them.) Laddie and Marty were outside of the gate for less than 20 minutes - and apparently nearby there was a patch in the trees where the guys would congregate and drink beer and not be seen from the road. (We found about 20 beer bottles - the pint size..., and neighbors have found up to 33 beer cans following a night-time gathering in that spot.)

What we figure now, based on all the information we have, is this: the dogs were let out at 10pm to go pee. Since Marty had taken off before recently, and these guys had been around recently, we think they were tempting him to come closer out there with food or something. That night he headed straight for the gate, and Laddie followed. Everything must have happened *very* quickly, since Marty limped back - shot - at 10:30pm. The guys probably coaxed him to come to them - Marty's not afraid of people and he's INCREDIBLY freindly - They got his collar off, then shot him from close range, from above - with a .22. The entrance wound is at an angle, right behind his shoulder, and comes out the near his clavicle in the front. It's a clean shot that thankfully missed everything vital and didn't injure him enough - he was able to take off into the trees and bushes on the adrenaline from the panic. Laddie would have stood far away from them - barking his head off. With his shy nature he wouldn't have come near them. When Marty was shot, Laddie jumped and took off too, in another direction - unfortunately, right out in the open - where they had a clear shot that killed him. They took his collar then. I'm not sure if these guys were doing it for sport, or with intent to rob the address on the collars (another common reason for pet shootings) - probably both.

Laddie was buried in the back pasture, under the branches of a mesquite tree, with two cactus plants on either side. We piled large, flat, reddish-rusty rocks on top, and I made a dream catcher to hang between those curving branchs.

We never did find out who actually shot the two dogs. But Marty did recover fully, though he was a bit shy of loud noises for a long time. No wonder. I'd love to have found out who did the deed, so I could have posted their mugshot here for the world to see, but the wonderful e-mails I've received are enough. Thankyou so much.

Afterword...

On day, while driving to work, she spotted a small limping puppy on the side of the road. Scrawny and filthy, apparently the dog had been shot recently. What was left of its right front leg was a mangled and diseased hinderance. The poor thing looked so miserable that she stopped the truck to coax it into the cab - thinking she'd at least have the local vet put it out of its misery.

The puppy came right up to her with no fear what-so-ever, waving his tail and eagerly climbing up into the cab. But as soon as she voiced her thoughts, "Come on boy - let's have the vet put you out of your misery...." *PCHING* the puppy was out of the truck in a flash. No way was he being put to sleep, no matter how miserable he was! A little more coaxing and a promise, "Okay, okay. Let's see what the vet can do for that leg then," and he came back climbing into the truck. All he wanted was a chance...

The vet pronounced the leg unsaveable, but the puppy otherwise healthy. So my freind took a deep breath, and shelled out the $500 for surgery to have the leg cleanly amputated.

The surgery went well, and the pup recovered quite quickly. Within a few days he was able to go home with her. A few bags of dog food later, and this scrawny, pathetic black dog has grown up into a healthy dog with a glossy coat, shining eyes, and BOUNCE in his step. He's probably about two-thirds black Labrador Retriever. The missing right front leg doesn't seem to slow him down any - he can run to the end of the road and back several times, and can dig holes the size of pickup trucks in the soft sandy ground in no time at all.

My freind named him "Chance". Afterall, all he wanted was a chance.

• A Dog's Prayer
• The Rainbow Bridge