This web site will be dedicated to the animals that have made a difference in our lives. We have been privileged to share our lives with some very wonderful friends.
We deal with all kinds of animals in the work that my wife does and now in my pet project. We have been blessed with some great pets over the years but none like Bart. Bart was by any definition of the word a mutt. His mother was a mix bred and his father was of unknown origin. We got him from my wife's brother who owned his mother. My initial reason to adopt him was to 1) remove him from an un-pleasant situation. 2) We had a boat at the time and I thought he would make a nice boat dog. On the way home the day we got him he got car sick. The only time we ever took him out on the boat we gave him Dramamine before we left the house and he still threw up 3 or 4 times before we got to the boat. I had to carry him to the boat and the whole time he was on the boat he laid in the middle and looked miserable the whole time. We never took him again.
We knew that we had a very special dog on our hands the first time he ever went out of the yard. My wife stared to go over to one of our neighbors to ask him to help us with some project we were working on, Bart started to follow her. When she noticed he was following her she brought him back to our property line and told him to stay. He sat there the whole time she was gone waiting for her. The next time she started to go over to the neighbors Bart stopped at the line and waited for her again.
When she started rehabilitation of wild animals we were apprehensive about how Bart would react to all the animals. We need not have worried, he took it all in stride even helping out with cleaning faces ( milk ).
We were having an Easter dinner one year and we ( the men folk) were sitting on the front porch our other dog Mac wanted to come out so I let him come out with us. Bart stood at the door looking at us. I thought he wanted to come out too so I let him out with us. A couple of minutes later I noticed he had disappeared. I got up to go find him as I did so I heard thumping coming from the side of the house. I went to investigate and Bart was pulling at the back gate trying to get into the back yard. He knew he was not suppose to be out front and it made him nervous.
He would go with us anywhere we could walk to and protect us just by his presence. He was not an aggressive dog but no one man or dog would ever think about harming us as long as he was with us.
We had a stray cat come on the front porch one night and Mac and Bart both were wanting out to get him. ( our cats were fine but strays were another story ) I don't know what I was thinking but I opened the front door and both of them were off like a shot. I finally tracked Mac down about 2 blocks from the house. He was the easier one to follow because he only has 3 legs and it does slow him down some what. I took him back to the house and started looking for Bart. I found him at the back door to our barn trying to get back into our yard.
He and Mac use to play a sort of dog tag on our property and with Mac being slower because of only having 3 legs and also because his legs were not as long. Bart would just seem to loop along letting Mac keep up with him. Occasionally he would get too far ahead of Mac and Mac would stop and figure out the best angle to cut him off and he would head that way. When he was successful in getting to a given area before Bart, Bart would have to jump over him to avoid a collision.
When we bought our new place we had all summer before we could actually move in. I started taking Mac with me when I went out to mow. Bart would wait for us to get back and greet Mac in such a way that it seemed he was trying to figure out where we were going. I finally put a leash on him one day and had to pick him up to get in the truck ( he did not like riding and was prone to car sickness ). After that first time, he would beat me to the truck if he thought that was where we were going. He would still lay on the seat so he could not see out the window but once we got to the new place he was ready to go.
We had put up fencing at our old place, not to contain Bart and Mac, but to give us some privacy. The new place has no fences. We were not too worried about Bart and Mac wondering off because they never had when they had the opportunity at the other place. I was amazed though that both of them would not go any farther towards the road then the short stretch of ornamental fencing we have at the side of the house. Once in a while if I was mowing the front part of the yard Bart would venture as far as our big pine tree. All I had to do was get his attention and point to the back of the house and he would go back and lay down and wait for me to finish. I never had to even stop the mower, just point and he would go.
We put up many blue bird boxes at our new place and Bart would make the rounds with me when I checked for eggs and babies.
If you can not tell by now Bart was more than a pet to us. He was our best friend. We love our other guys too but Bart had that something special that just wormed his way into your heart more then any of the other pets we now have or I have ever had.
I may be heart less in saying this or seem so, but it is true. He was so much a part of our everyday life that his passing was harder on us then losing a parent. Don't get me wrong I miss my parents but they were not with me every day like Bart was. He was with me from the time I got home at night till I left for work the next morning, so his absence is much more noticeable.
This page was last updated on 03/15/03.
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