Getting Millie
Not every dog is that special one who connects to your soul like my big sweet Newfoundland, Lucille, did. She was the gentle creature who’d taken me through the death of my sister, family problems, surgeries, the isolation of Covid. For me, her departure was one of the great tragedies of my life. And so, as soon as she was gone, I set out to find another dog. As it turned out, I should have waited.
A SIX-PART SERIES, BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Originally published December 2022 on nicolejeffords.com
Part 1: Getting Millie
Nicole with one of her father’s German Shepherds
My whole life, I’ve always had dogs. In fact, my father, a kind and worldly man who had escaped Hitler Germany and was in the oil business, bred German Shepherds and was a dog show judge, flying all over the country to stand in the middle of a ring and award ribbons and trophies to the canine he deemed had the best (and second and third best) conformation, movement and disposition.
Not every dog, however, is that special one that connects to your soul.
I’ve had dogs I’ve loved – dachshunds, golden retrievers, one or two mutts – but none so much as my big sweet Newfoundland, Lucille, whom I had to put down over the summer because she had lymphoma. (She was also twelve, which is old for such a large dog.) I had owned her since she was a year, a sweet-faced girl whose coat had not yet fully come in and whose legs seemed long for her body because she’d been spayed too early. The only thing I knew about her was she’d been picked up in Houston – perhaps dumped in the street? – and sent to a Newfie shelter. A friend had found her for me after my previous dog died. “Is this what you’d like?” she said, holding up her phone to show me a pic of a large black dog with droopy lips. “Yes,” I said, nodding vigorously.
A week later Lucille, who came with that name, was mine.
But now, eleven years later, Lucille was gone. She was the gentle creature who’d taken me through the death of my sister, through difficult and taxing family problems, two shoulder replacement surgeries, an estrangement from a close relative and, finally, the isolation of COVID. When I was down-hearted or upset, I’d get down on the floor with Lucille and we’d stare into one another’s eyes and she’d purr like a cat, only deeper, her whole body thrumming with the sound. She’d drape one giant paw over me and we’d lie there together, breathing back and forth into one another’s nostrils. For me, her departure was one of the great tragedies of my life.
And so, as soon as she was gone, I set out to find another dog. As it turned out, I should have waited.
Lucille
Part II: Getting Millie
After the loss of my fabulous Lucille, I was desperate to get a new dog. My older daughter, Jofka, told me about an ad for Newfie mix puppies on Craigslist. Puppies? I wanted a dog who was at least a year old and had some training. But I didn’t listen to myself.
The puppies in question were somewhere outside Waco, no address listed, just a map with coordinates. We piled into the car, me, my housekeeper, Lez, and Jofka. This was going to be an adventure.
We installed Lez, an immaculately dressed and bejeweled Latina, in the driver’s seat, and off we went. In the beginning stretch, about twenty minutes outside Austin, we began to see pro-life signs – miles and miles of billboards showing enormous pictures of babies with captions that read: “At fourteen days, my eyes open.” (The captions are not necessarily factual.) Already we felt as if we were in the boonies.
At some point we left the highway and started driving on unpaved country roads. It was a scorching day in early August. Behind the wheel, Lez was muttering to herself. She was a city girl, with no taste for the hinterlands or the beauty of bucolic landscapes. She wanted to be back where there were stores, restaurants, strip malls. But we were in the middle of nowhere and all we saw around us were acres of dried brown fields and gigantic wind turbines that towered over everything, eerily dotting the terrain. Eventually we pulled up in front of a gate with a sign above it that read: “Redd’s Ranch.” A man in his early forties with rotting front teeth opened the gate and waved us in.
Lez refused to get out of the car. She turned her rings around and put her hands in her lap. When Jofka and I climbed from the car, she yelled, “Put your masks on!” even though we were in the middle of the countryside, miles from crowds or spreading virus. But Lez was as bossy as an army sergeant and we did as she said, quickly slapping masks over our faces and looking like idiots as we stepped gingerly across a rutted, dusty field dominated by two derelict-looking trailers. It was so hot that sweat immediately began to trickle down my back under my shirt. Ahead of us, baking in the sun, lay an enormous enclosure filled with at least thirty small black puppies.
Part III: Getting Millie
Millie, the day we rescued her
The reason Lez wouldn’t get out of the car was that Hispanics and hillbillies have a traditional dislike and distrust of one another. I hadn’t known that. The people we were visiting – the Redds – looked like meth addicts with their dusty, untended property and the decrepit trailer they lived in. When I saw all those puppies, at least thirty of them, sitting in the baking heat, something twisted in my stomach. We’d been told that they had two female puppies for us to consider. One of them had been separated out and put in a small pen. The other, they informed us, had “run off somewhere, disappeared.”
The puppy they’d singled out for us was a right mess. Her coat was dry and patchy, her eyes lustreless and dull. She had a long, ratty tail and this she held timidly between her legs. It didn’t take much intelligence to see that she was shaky and in poor health, but she had a sweet face, and without saying a word to one another, Jofka and I decided to take her.
The Redds called her a “Newfador,” as if they had concocted a new breed. In reality, she was a mix of Bernese Mountain Dog, Lab and Newfie. The Lab predominated, but we wouldn’t know that till later. (We did, however, get to meet the father, a dirty, rust-colored Newf with an agreeable face; the mother was nowhere to be seen.) We lifted the dog into the back seat of the car and there she lay for the two hour drive home, quiet and still, enjoying the luxury of the A/C and the smooth and steady motion of the car. We had paid a hundred-and-fifty dollars for her, the same price we would have had to pay to adopt a dog from the pound.
She was fourteen weeks old, a large puppy already the size of a grown Australian Shepherd (a friend had an adult dog of that breed, so I was able to compare). The first day home, she was a dream. I had a crate for her, but she preferred to lie behind an antique chair upholstered in light green silk that my husband had inherited from his parents. Later, we would discover that she had completely destroyed the back of the chair, but for the moment we didn’t know that and were just pleased that she had found a place where she could flop down and feel safe.
For the first day she was chill, slowly moving out of her comfort zone as she wandered around the house, sniffing and exploring. We thought, Wow, what a great dog! And congratulated ourselves on having done a good deed, rescuing her, as we had, from nasty circumstances. But after that first day, all hell broke loose and we realized we’d made a big mistake.
Part IV: Getting Millie
Millie
The dog we’d rescued had massive paws – not a good sign. I couldn’t think of a name for her; all I could come up with was Millie, which wasn’t quite right, but I decided to use as a placeholder. The first thing I learned about Millie was that she was teething. Shoes, chairs, drawings, handbags: nothing was safe. Least safe of all was my body, which I quickly discovered was Millie’s favorite object to chew on. My arms, hands, legs were covered in bites, little red tooth marks, some of them open and bleeding. I’d let Millie out of her crate, drag her to the yard for a pee, and then, almost inevitably, lose control of her as she raced back into the house, galloping through the rooms with her leash flying.
I didn’t like to admit it, but she was too much for me. Happy times were when she was in her crate and the house was quiet. When she was loose, we were all miserable.
She seemed like a psycho puppy, so full of buzzing energy that each of us did our best to stay out of her way. Meanwhile, my daughter, Jofka, got online and found the Redds’ Facebook page. There was all sorts of information on that page, but not a single mention of dogs. We saw pictures of Mrs. Redd barrel racing, of their family being baptized under a shower, of their little boys snuggling up together in bed, of Bible camp and various church activities – but again, no pics of a single dog. Hmmm … that was strange. Particularly because Mrs. Redd included all sorts of other stuff on her page – very private, shocking stuff, such as the family was fostering a young child who was taken away from them. They fought in court to have the child returned, but lost the case.
Who would admit to that so publicly?
I guess the Redds, but to me it sounded like a sordid sob story. We figured all those so-called “Newfadors” were haphazardly bred to be sold at flea markets or by the side of highways. We figured the backyard breeding operation wasn’t entirely legal or up-to-code, therefore all the secrecy. And we decided the best way to deal with the situation was to report the Redds. We had the name of their preacher. We would get in touch with her.
Part V: Getting Millie
Millie & Nicole
Once I had the preacher’s name, I sat down and emailed her about the Redds’ nasty backyard breeding operation. She got straight back to me, saying she would notify the county sheriff and pull all documents regarding claims of ownership on the Redds’ land. I don’t know what happened after that. I figured I had done my job. But, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished, and I was stuck with a dog I didn’t get along with. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the dog, wanted to wrap my arms around her and hug her all the time; I just couldn’t handle her. So I sent her to a trainer where she was boarded for two weeks and taught behavioral commands. “Millie, come!” “Millie, sit!” “Millie, stay!” For the trainer, her conduct was perfect; for me it sucked. I would shout a command and she would give me a mischievous look and do the opposite of whatever I had asked.
Our house was in disarray. Until eight-thirty at night, when Millie was put in her crate to sleep for the evening, I was a prisoner. What was I going to do?
After three weeks, I decided to re-home her. She was a gorgeous dog, her coat thick and glossy after a rigorous de-worming and many days of good food. I snapped photos of her and, along with a description of what an excellent companion she was, posted them on Facebook. Thank god I had takers.
So now we were down to one dog, a miniature black Labradoodle named Vini. This little dog had never been on his own before. Millie was aggressive with him, always getting in his face, barking non-stop to try and engage him in play. Poor Vini would hide behind me for protection. Our previous dog had brought him up, frequently checking to see he was okay out in the yards or walking in the street, but now he had only his sharp little white teeth to shield him from trouble. It was not a win/win situation. When Millie left, he was palpably relieved. He had the house to himself. He had me to himself. And that made all the difference, being an only dog who could peacefully gnaw on a bone in a pool of sunshine in the back yard without the possibility of attack.
Vini & Millie
Millie went to a new owner. I was left feeling a little desolate, arms aching to hold her one more time. I had done a good deed and now came the punishment: a sturdy, ongoing sense of guilt for having given up on a sweet, high jinks puppy whose only fault was exuberance.
Part VI: Getting Millie
Hershey, the Newfie puppy bred in Ohio
Dogs, dogs, dogs.
The postscript to this story is that I became obsessed with finding another dog and began to scour Craigslist in Houston and Dallas for possibilities.
Against my better judgment, I put money down on a sturdy and totally untrained Newfoundland mix puppy who’d been bred in Ohio. She was supposed to arrive this morning, but as the days grew closer my sense of dread became more and more powerful and I finally listened to myself and canceled the purchase.
The sense of relief was instant. I lost money, but didn’t care. For the first time in many weeks, I felt calm and optimistic.
But the search wasn’t over. I couldn’t let go of the idea of finding another dog and continued scouring the various sites for prospects.
Meanwhile, peace reigned in our house. No puppy racing around with a stolen scarf in her mouth, no having to pull down my sleeves to hide bite marks, no huge, dirty puppy paws on the couch or kitchen counter. I should’ve been happy, but there was this empty place in me that wanted another canine – a big, fluffy, full-throated canine that would make intruders think twice before attempting to gain access to our property. So I kept looking.
The truth is, this is the worst time for me to deal with the upheaval of a new dog. I’m about to start work on a new novel. And our household is as full as it could be with my daughter, who works out of my studio, and her baby (and baby nurse) here every day.
But my craziness continues.
Now I’m planning to look at a nine-month-old Landseer puppy in Houston. He’s huge and gorgeous and he just might be my next dog.
The Landseer in Houston (potentially Nicole’s next dog)
