I've been thinking about Stokes all day, and thought of more to tell about him. He was a contrary dog from day one - when Temma, his dam, went into labor, it was around 1 am...everything seemed normal, her water broke and she started pushing...and pushing...and pushing...and no puppy was coming. I called Dr. Joe at home and he said he'd meet me at the office, so off I went with Temma. Joe examined her and said it felt like the puppy went from one uterine horn back up into the other horn, instead of coming down the birth canal. He wasn't able to get hold of any of his techs, so it was just him and me dealing with an emergency c-section. He opened Temma up and he was right, that first pup was wedged between the two horns of the uterus like a big fat cork. He pulled out a big dark male who appeared to be dead - I rubbed and swung that pup, but I could not get him to breath...Joe finally gave him a shot of heart stimulant, and that did the trick, the pup started squalling and he was fine after that. Oh, and did you guess by now that that puppy was Stokes?
When he was nearly 2, he had surgery on his hip and had to be confined to a crate in the house for several weeks. He absolutely hated it. Once he was able to go back outside, he didn't want to come in the house any more...only when he got older, during thunderstorms, did he show any desire to come in the house. Sometimes in the winter it would be snowing and I'd see him laying outside of his dog house that was stuffed with nice warm wood chips...he would dig some of those chips out of the dog house and make a pile in front of it, then lay on them outside in the snow! He could make me crazy sometimes, but that was just the way he was. Stokes was a real original, that's for sure.
While digging through the photos last night for some pictures of Stokes, I came upon this one.
This was our first Akita, Anjin. Anjin was a longcoat and he was a great dog. Michelle is about 5 years old there, and Bryan about 3. Anjin is about a year and a half, I would guess, as he still looks kind of gangly. When we decided on an Akita, and I spoke to Mary, a local breeder-judge, she told me she had two puppies available - a red bitch with a black mask that was show quality, and a longcoated white male pet. As we drove out to her home, I told Marc I didn't want a male, nor did I want a white dog! Mary took us into her yard and let the two pups out - they were about 6 months old at the time, big puppies. That fuzzy white male, who she called Speedy, came barrelling over to us and jumped right up on me and just about knocked me to the ground. He was so excited! At that point it was all over, guess who came home with us?
