I inadvertently left out one of my dogs! Dinah is Sark's mother. Carol and I bought her when she was a tiny Dalmation puppy. She had one brown eye and one blue eye. She was a sweet, sweet girl. Not terribly bright, but she was a fantastic mother.
One day, when Dinah was about 3 or 4 years old, a huge (I mean HUGE!) black lab, wearing a cartoony metal-studded leather collar, sauntered across our eight acres. Dinah was instantly smitten, and the two eloped. Dinah returned three days later, muddied but, obviously, very very happy. Now, this was my first ever litter of pups. What a delivery! Dinah decided to have them under an old fallen willow tree stump, in the middle of a freaking thunder/lightening/gully-washing rainstorm. Well, the space underneath that stump was filling up with rainwater, so I got down on hands and knees and literally raked (with a garden rake cause my arms weren't long enough to reach) them four pups into my arms.
All was well. I counted three boys and a girl. The days that followed were some of the happiest I ever spent there in Athens, Alabama. I spent hours and hours with Dinah and her pups. Watching, laughing, learning.
We gave three puppies away to former students. One got run over. I don't recall what happened to the other two. I kept the biggest - Sark. His death and burial is another story, for another time.
