Going to the Dogs! Ivy the Magnificent!

People thought I was nuts, that after a dog like Gopher, I wanted another one. Actually, my son wanted another one. He and I made a trip to the Long Island Dog Pound. There were two pups, a brother and a sister. In retrospect, I should have taken both! They were both beautiful and endearing, but after my experience with Gopher, I wanted only a female dog. We named her IVY because my son had been recently hospitalized and had an IV in his arm. As beautiful as she was, she was also quite smart. She quickly learned to go outside, and she became part of the family immediately. She entertained us and developed some habits that delighted us all. She was long-haired and needed attention to all the hair! In the summer, she had to be shaved down. It was almost like shearing a lamb! Every day, when my husband came home, she would greet him on the staircase and remove the baseball cap that he usually wore. Then she would run into the kitchen where we had a stool and put her front legs on it to assume a position where she would get a good rub! Her coloring was like a tri-colored Collie. She had markings around her eyes that looked like she had applied eye makeup. Indeed, my husband would tell her that her eye makeup was perfect daily!

When my father-in-law visited, she would grab his hand and pull him into the house. She was good with everyone except babies! I don’t know why, but I was cautious with her if an infant was in the house.

Ivy made it to seventeen years old. She came with us when we moved to Virginia. She died about a year later. There is a Jewish tradition that when a person dies, you light a candle. It’s called a Yahrzeit candle. It burns for 26 hours. The candle is lit on the anniversary of a death as well. I didn’t have a Yahrzeit candle, so I just lit a regular candle. I expected it to burn out in 12 hours or so. When Ivy died, the candle lasted for 36 hours. Strange but true.