All About Pets

Sheba – The First I Could Call My Own

When I moved into my own apartment, I wanted to find one that would allow dogs. My second landlord did allow dogs, so I started going to the local shelters looking for a puppy. I didn’t have much luck because the shelters wouldn’t allow someone who worked full time to adopt a puppy, but I kept looking.

One beautiful summer day I was wandering around a local flea market and I passed a woman with a puppy on a leash. I stopped to pet the puppy and remarked how cute it was. The woman asked me if I wanted her. I thought she was kidding, but she said she needed to find a home for her soon. I was in such shock that I didn’t think to ask a lot of questions, but she did tell me that she was around 4 months old. She wasn’t sure what breed she was (another mutt), but to me she looked like a miniature German Shepherd. She was mostly black with some brown on her face and paws. I fell in love with her right away, so I took her, and the woman left. All those months trying to find a puppy, and then one day a puppy found me! (I’ve always been a strong believer in fate.)  

Although I had been wanting a dog, I wasn’t expecting to bring one home that day, so I had to go out and get food, bowls, and other necessities. I named her Sheba. The name just came to me and seemed to fit. She never grew bigger than 30-35 lbs, but you’d never know it if she were barking at you from behind a closed door. She had the bark of a 60-lb German Shepherd. I have known people who were afraid of her when they first met her. If she felt threatened (such as someone she didn’t know coming into the house), she would growl and bare her teeth (but she never tried to bite anyone).

From the time I took her home, throughout her entire life, she had an unexplainable aversion to men with beards. I always wondered what she had gone through in those first few months of her life, and if that was the reason that the woman was so anxious to find her a new home. After all, the woman knew nothing about me, but was she that desperate to get the puppy away from someone else? I try not to think about that much, and I hope Sheba was happy during her life with me, but it just amazed me that whatever happened in her first few months stayed with her throughout her entire life. She did manage to eventually get comfortable with most of the men, but she was still nervous whenever she met someone new with a beard.

Well, that’s how Sheba came into my life. More about her in future posts.

Until next time…Maureen

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