CLAY HENRY: Rosie deserves a love letter

Sometimes I write for others. Someone described my style as “love letters to fans.” I tend to emphasize the good that’s happening around Razorback Nation.

But now and then, my columns are not for anyone else. They are for me and they can be emotional. They are about my passion.

It could be a fly fishing trip to Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. I write those to preserve memories. Some probably do enjoy seeing the photos, but they might not really want to read 2,500 words about someone else’s vacation.

Then there are some pieces that aren’t going to appeal to the masses. They aren’t anything other than a note to myself, or my inner circle. This is one of those, a story of our love of an extraordinary pet lost this week.

Our Rosie — or Rosie the Posie if you are a family member — lived to almost 16 years. That’s unusual for a Labrador retriever. Big dog breeds don’t normally live that long. The average age for labs is 10 to 12 years, but many don’t last to that age.

Screenshot

But to understand Rosie’s life, go back 22 years ago when Jean Ann and I were both depressed over becoming empty nesters. Daughters Sarah and Becca, both college graduates with good jobs, were moving out.

I had a plan to ease the pain for Jean Ann. She was losing every day interaction with more than just daughters. They were and are her best friends.

I didn’t tell one person what I had in mind. It was Valentine’s Day and I had plotted to give my bride something sweet, something chocolate. You guessed it, we got our first chocolate lab.

I found Charlie Brown through a want ad in the newspaper. We picked him out in a Bella Vista garage among the last three in a litter. He was perfect. He loved his crate at night and was the star dog at obedience class.

Charlie Brown was that typical, wonderful sweet lab. He’d chase the ball until your arm tired. He could be let out at night to make his neighborhood rounds. You aren’t supposed to do that, but no one in our sub division cared. He was their pet, too.

We had Charlie for eight years. I wrote several columns about him. I interviewed him when Gus Malzahn was hired as Arkansas offensive coordinator. Everyone else had extensive comments on that Houston Nutt hire.

I could never get Charlie to talk about it. I thought that was a bad sign. He barked when it was time to eat. He definitely spoke up when he wanted me to throw the ball. He whined when the girls pulled into the driveway for a visit. But he had no comment on whether he would get on the Gus Bus. It was like Gus was a cat.

We lost Charlie at age 8. He was laying in the garage as I mowed the front yard. A morning dove dipped in front of the garage and off he went. He generally obeyed commands to “come back.” Not this time. A truck pulling telephone poles got him two blocks away.

It was devastating. The driver felt badly, but it wasn’t his fault. It was the one and only time we saw Charlie sprint into traffic. The driver and I saw him take his last breath. He picked him up and gently put him in my truck.

Telling Jean Ann was among the worst things I’ve ever had to do. She mourned and said it would be our last pet. She couldn’t handle it. You outlive your pets and she didn’t want to do it again.

But after six weeks, she gave me a task as she left for work: find another Charlie Brown. I told her that would be next to impossible, but I’d try.

After thinking about the long odds, I went back to the same source, the want ads. It may be the last great thing our family got from that dead part of the newspaper.

I found another ad selling chocolate labs. A couple in Bella Vista had two left from what they said would be their last litter. I made the call. Suddenly, I put it together, these were the same people that sold us Charlie Brown and the litter had the same parents. Hallelujah!

I called Jean Ann. Her first question, do they have a male? They did. Could I get it reserved until she got off work? Yes.

But she threw me a curve on the way north on I-49. What about bringing two pups home? I feared the worst when we met two puppies in the garage. There was the male, a Charlie Brown lookalike with a dark brown coat. He had a tag along, a sweet little female with a lighter brown coat. The breeders said they were best buddies since birth.

Jean Ann looked at me lovingly and said, “We will take them both. Charlie Brown never had a buddy when we were gone.”

Raising two pups is problematic. You have to separate them for training. We did the best we could, but they took more time than Charlie Brown. They were always too busy chasing each other for their bones and toys.

There were some great early stories, the best right after they had been “fixed.” Daughter Sarah loved to check on them after work. We’d gone to a Razorback basketball game and left them in the backyard. Sarah came by, threw balls for them and went home.

However, there was a problem. She didn’t lock the back door. Our door handles were levers. If they were not locked, the dogs could put their paws on them and the doors would pop open.

Rockey and Rosie got into the house. They had a hey day. They pulled toilet paper off the roll and took it all over the house. It was over the top of couches. I wish there was video of that rampage.

We loved a big, stuffed yellow lab doorstop in my study. They tore it apart. Beans were everywhere.

They found a full Hungarian partridge skin on my fly tying desk. They pulled it apart. Tiny feathers normally used to tie dry fly wings were strewn everywhere.

But it could have been worse. Right next to the bird skin on my desk was an open pack of fly tying hooks. They hadn’t touched the hooks.

The back door was wide open and our two pups were asleep in the middle of the yard. Their guilt was obvious. There were about 50 tiny feathers on their face and the last tattered piece of an expensive bird skin lay between them.

We had Rockey until he was 11. Cancer got him. That left Rosie alone for the first time since birth. We worried that she would be depressed. No, she hit a new gear and instead of sleeping in her crate in a workroom, she got the foot of the bed.

She became Jean Ann’s constant companion. She never went back to the workroom. She traveled in the car on errands. She was the hit in Home Depot where a worker in the paint department hands out dog treats.

Rosie’s last five years were wonderful. She never got tired of dog food, but Jean Ann began to give her everything special a dog could desire. There were daily trips to Sonic for a plain burger. And she took advantage of her inner calmness to roam our acreage. She was never a runner and could be left outside.

I had installed an underground electric fence. Maybe she remembered it, but it was turned off the last seven years of her life in the woods of Norfork. It wasn’t necessary.

Without any discussion, Jean Ann began to give her a 7 ounce tenderloin filet from Richard’s Meat Shop. There was turkey bacon at breakfast. The vet would see Rosie’s perfect slim profile and declare, “She’s a warrior. Bad hips, bad knees, but great form. Whatever you are feeding her, keep it up.”

And, so that’s the way it went all the way to the end. She got a wonderful piece of steak Sunday night. She got turkey bacon Monday morning. She went to Sonic early Monday afternoon. She gobbled down all of that, plus her mid day treats for dental health.

I can’t imagine a better last day. Even her passing seemed to be a blessing. She had a seizure and died in Jean Ann’s arms in a matter of seconds.

The end is always super sad. There were lots of tears, but also lots of grins as Jean Ann and I told Rosie stories. Rockey and Charlie Brown are in those stories, too. And, there is young Millie, a yellow lab we’ve had for about 18 months.

I didn’t talk much about this when I won Millie in an auction at the Trout Unlimited dinner, but I viewed her as a transition for when we lost Rosie. I remembered how difficult those six weeks were between Charlie Brown and the arrival of Rockey and Rosie.

Millie is a bit different than the three brown dogs. She plays more with toys than they did. She also watches sports on TV. She is fascinated with soccer. Of course, she has some soccer balls in the backyard. She will watch football and basketball, too.

Who knows, maybe I’ll interview Millie for a sports column. She whines and groans a lot. That’s the sort of thing fans do now on message boards. It could be interesting.

If you made it this far, I apologize for writing something that doesn’t apply to you. Absolutely, it was something I needed to write for myself.

It’s done and I didn’t get any tears on the keyboard. That’s hard to do when you write a love letter.