Baby

I just finished reading Gracie's (Sense and Simplicity) post about how her dog Juno found them and how they found her.  Thank you Gracie for giving that little girl a good home after her years of hardship.

We started breeding King Shepherds because of Baby.  Years before my husband and I got together, he heard about a dog that had been left alone on an acreage outside of town.  Seems the owners up and moved and left the dog fenced in on the property with nothing but a bowl of raw eggs.  Hubby (a huge dog lover) got mad and drove out there late after work and was greeted by this huge wolf like dog bounding out of the darkness.  Now my soldier boy isn't scared of anything, and well, Baby has that name for a reason (he came with the name as it was on his tag) so he brought Baby home.  Cleaned him up and nursed him back to health and they were inseparable.

See, Baby was a King Shepherd and even for the breed was a big dog!  Almost all black with some tan on his legs, 145lbs of muscle and when standing his head was just above my waist (I'm 5' 5") and he looked like a wolf.  What a boy though, like I said Baby was just that, the sweetest most gentle dog I've ever met.  Little babies could crawl all over him, senior citizens loved to hug him and he was the best thing that ever happened to my soldier.  See, my hubby has PTSD as a result of numerous tours to some horrific areas of the world.  Although hubby rescued Baby, that dog also rescued my soldier boy and gave him a reason to keep going in the world.  Thanks to Baby, my soldier boy was able to work on his own issues and the two of them became a therapy team helping others and when we were married, Baby was our ring bearer bringing us together.

Now as you can tell I'm writing in past tense.  Baby passed on to the Summerland two years ago at the age of ten after fighting and losing a battle with cancer.  Because of him we have Piper, Payton and Polar and have had two litters placed in wonderful homes.  Three of our pups have gone to special needs families with children with autism, and both Payton and Polar are training to be therapy dogs and Piper is working on tracking for search and rescue.  Baby is always with us, and is missed greatly by us all.  Below is a portrait of Baby done by Deb Bates, a talented artist who works in pencil crayon.

Baby

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