My Dogs

My first dog was there before I was born. He was a yellow lab named Ike. I don't remember him very much, because he passed away when I was seven. However my parents tell me a lot of stories about him. One time they took him to a lake with an island in the middle. He swam out to the island, and wouldn't come back no matter how much they called him. He ended up staying out there for three hours. Another time, when my parents lived in Denver, he ran away to a soccer game. No one there spoke English, so it was really difficult for them to find him.

We bought the next dog when I was three. He was an Australian shepherd named JT. When strangers approached him, he would always bark. He usually did it because he was protecting my mom. As he got older, he started to lose his vision and would start barking at my mom when she came home. A couple weeks ago, he seemed to be getting sick. At first we thought it was just allergies, but then, a few days later, he could barely walk. We took him to another vet, and they diagnosed him with lung cancer. He passed away last Easter, 2015. 

The first dog we got that was actually my dog, was in 2012. She is an Australian cattle dog named Yuma. We got her when we lived at our old house, from IMHS. They said that she was found on the side of the road in Arizona. A guy that was on a vacation there, saw her and put her in his car. Then he brought her to IMHS on his way home. After we bought her, we took her to the vet. They said that she had a tick-borne disease called anaplasmosis. They said that it was easily treatable, but if we didn't give her medication in the next week, she would have died. Luckily, she's fine now. 

During the summer, we were volunteering for the Keenesburg marathon since it went right by our house. When some people were running by, they had two dogs with them. They said that they weren't their dogs, so we picked them up. After the marathon, we drove all around trying to find where the dogs came from. We knocked on doors and made posts online, but we couldn't find anything. My mom said that we can keep them, but only for a little while.

We named one of them Parker. She was was all white except for a few tan spots around her eyes and her face. My parents said that she looks like a mix between a Jack Russel terrier and an Australian shepherd. She was really cute. If you were laying on the couch, she would just jump up and lay on your lap, even though she wasn't that small. She also loved laying upside down. We sold her to my moms friend, Lisa. A few weeks after that, she had puppies, which was really unexpected.

We named the other one Denver.  She was a mini Australian shepherd. She was mostly black, with a little bit of white on her face. She liked to climb up the couch and lay on the back part. We used to call her Shark because she loved to play and bite. We sold her to another one of my moms friends, Heather.

Since JT died, we are going to get a new dog. We aren't sure what dog we are going to get, but in a few weeks my parents are going to look at dog. Her name is Hyacinth, which we would probably change if we bought her. We can't buy her right now because she has puppies. My parents said that if we didn't want to buy her, we could get one of her puppies, which would make me really excited.