The Story Of Jesse, My First German Shepherd. Part The Last

The day after that shameful exam, I signed us up for basic obedience again. And at the end of that course, we passed the test.

But Jesse was becoming harder and harder to handle at the vet's, where he went for his weekly shots. The techs were plainly afraid of him. When I walked him in town he didn't like men anywhere near me, and let them know it. When the mailman put the mail through the slot in our front door, Jesse attacked it. There was something about him that didn't feel quite right to me, so I kept signing up for more advanced obedience classes, figuring that this was the only way to keep him under control.

I also took him running—I was running 25 miles a week at that time—assuming that a tired dog is less likely to get into trouble. We used to get a lot of comments, Jesse and I, on those runs. They came invariably from men, and every last one of them went something like, “Ain't nobody gonna bother you, lady, with that dog alongside....”

At home he periodically would do amazing things. One time, the girls and I were sorting through their outgrown toys to give to charity at Christmas. In the middle of the attic we made a huge pile of magnetic alphabet boards, a Fisher-Price farm, a little cart you could ride on, a stack of Dr. Seuss books...all the detritus of a 1970s childhood.

Jesse came clicking up the stairs, took one look, and clicked back down. Two minutes later he was back with his nylabone, which he dropped on the pile of toys. He left, and while the girls and I stared at each other open-mouthed we heard him coming up again, this time with his ball, which he also put on the pile.

That was when we started saying that inside Jesse's head was a slightly retarded human, who sadly had never learned to speak.

But the good times did not last.

One afternoon I came home from the College to find my daughters looking shaken. (By then we had left our house in the country and moved to the center of the small town where I worked.) A friend of the girls had been visiting after school and left the front door open as he went home.

Jesse had rushed out, crossed the street, and jumped on an older woman who was walking by with her husband. He latched onto her arm and tore her coat—though thankfully not her arm—before passers-by pulled him off her.

The woman and her husband, who lived in the neighborhood, were terrified. The first thing I did was to get their version of the story, and write a check for the coat. Then I sat down, put my head in my hands, and tried to think.

An older couple out for an afternoon stroll were surely the least threatening of strangers. Most importantly, they had not been anywhere near our house or yard, but across the street and in front of the Court House, where dozens of people walked every day.

Our front door opened directly onto the sidewalk. If insecurely latched, it could be pulled open by a child. What if the woman Jesse had attacked had been a toddler—would we have a major mangling, even a death, on our hands?

The unprovoked nature of the attack, and the thought of a child as possible victim forced me to conclude that the only responsible action was to have Jesse euthanized.

“Euthanasia”: good death. True indeed for those in pain or so weakened by age that life holds no joy or pleasure. But for our Jesse, five years old, full of vigor, affection and smarts? How could I live with the decision to put him down?

But then, how could I live with myself if he, out of the blue--despite the two years of obedience classes, the exercise, the vet care—seriously damaged a child?

That night Alison, the one Jesse had so unmercifully herded when she was little, took him for a last long walk around the neighborhood. I let her go. I knew she would be safe with him.

The next morning I made an appointment with the vet, and asked my husband to go with me. The only way I could deal with what was happening was to shut down emotionally. We walked Jesse into the clinic and told the vet what had happened, and our decision. He did not argue, and asked if we wanted to be there while he gave the injection. I said...no.

Over the years, I have had several dogs and cats euthanized for health reasons. I have always held them and comforted them until the last sigh, and the final closing of the eyes. But with Jesse—my smart, beautiful, prime-of-life Jesse—I couldn't do it.

We left him there and went to our offices, and the girls went to school, and life went on.

But oh, Jesse, what a mark you left on us, and how sadly we remember you.

The Nice Guy

Among farm animals, the male of the species is often problematic. In the days before artificial insemination, dairy farmers were often killed by their herd sires. Male goats stink to high heaven in the fall. Rams ram anything and anybody in sight. Though small in size, roosters have a surfeit of testosterone that tends to breed trouble as well as chicks. Our first rooster was so aggressive that we called him The Ayatollah. My goat-milking pail has a large dent on it from the day I threw it at him in self defense. I'm sorry to say that all I got out of the incident was a dented pail. The Ayatollah was undeterred in his attempts to kill me until we made him into soup.

But he was not our last rooster. A couple of years ago we had an elegant black-and-white striped Barred Rock. He was not aggressive towards us, but he fell in love with one of his wives, forsaking all others. This meant that the Chosen One had to submit to his advances dozens of times every day. As a result, the feathers on her back split, broke and fell off. When she started looking haggard, stressed, and miserable I knew the rooster had to go.

The moment he left, a conventual peace settled over the flock. The girls went about their business hunting bugs, laying eggs, and taking dust baths with nary a scuffle, and very little noise. Life was good, if a little dull, for quite a while.

But then the yellow hen, the matriarch of the flock, got it in her head to hatch some eggs. She fluffed up her feathers and settled on the nest with a determined look on her face. Nothing I did--taking the eggs away every day, getting her off the nest every chance I got--would dissuade her. She didn't care that the eggs, there being no rooster around, weren't fertile. She wanted babies, and she was hoping for a miracle.

Then one spring afternoon, the fox carried off a hen that had gotten out of the fence, even as a pair of hawks whistled in the sky. That's when I decided that I had to get another husband for my flock.

I went to check out a Buff Orpington rooster that was for sale. He was gorgeous, and enormous, ponderous and clumsy as a wrestler, with golden plumage and a huge red comb.

“Is he aggressive?” I asked the farmer. “Not towards me,” he answered, “but my wife has to take a stick with her when she goes to get the eggs.” Seeing a doubtful look cross my face, and eager to make a sale, he opened the coop door and said “Here, why don't you go in and see for yourself.”

I walked in and the rooster came rushing at my legs. And here my addiction to “The Dog Whisperer” bore fruit, for I instantly reared up to my full height, stuck out my chest, took a step forward with my arm and forefinger extended, and emitted an explosive “Pshhhhttt!” that Cesar would have been proud of.

It worked. The rooster backed off, and that evening he was with our flock. I named him Charlemagne.

My hens took to him instantly. They followed him around even though, not having had access to pasture in his former life, he wasn't quite sure what to do in our expanse of grass and its teeming insect life. But he soon figured it out, and now whenever he finds a morsel that he thinks the girls will like, he calls them over with motherly clucks, and doesn't eat until they have had their fill.

He is a perfect gentleman. His not overly-loud crow is only heard occasionally. He doesn't play favorites, but distributes his favors equitably among the hens, yet seems more restrained than his predecessors. If a hawk flies over, he hustles everybody into the coop. And when night falls, he leads the way to the roosts.

When I bought Charlemagne, I also bought two hens from his former flock, to keep him company and because I needed more layers. The two new hens got a less enthusiastic reception from our flock that the rooster did, and for several days there were scuffles over food and roosting space and various other matters of etiquette.

I was filling the feeder one evening as the flock was settling in for the night, and I noticed that the two new hens hopped up on the roost on either side of Charlemagne, where they proceeded to burrow under his wings like chicks under their mother. So eagerly did they burrow and push that Charlemagne lost his balance and fell off the roost. No sooner had he waddled over to the other roost and perched upon it than the two hens hopped up beside him and tried to hide under his wings, making him lose his balance again. This went on and on until I left the coop, hoping that when it got dark enough, they would all go to sleep and Charlemagne would get some rest.

Ever since the Cesar Millan confrontation, Charlemagne has been the soul of politeness towards me. The flock seems different somehow with him around, more animated. More like a family instead of a convent. And the hens are laying fertile eggs—I can see when I break them open the tiny light-colored spot with a circle around it that indicates that, if incubated, this egg would produce a chick.

With any luck, come spring we will have a mother hen bustling about with her little ones. The only trouble is, nobody in the flock is giving any signs of going broody. They are too busy running after Charlemagne to even think of sitting on the nest.