My Man's Best Friend

I was pleased to hear today that my husband has been able to read my blog almost every day! At his sweet request, I agreed to post on our favorite pet ever, Patches.

We bought Patches from a breeder in California (while we were living out there) who also ran a horse rescue farm. We had done our research online as to what breed we wanted, we were both in quick agreement that we wanted an Austrailian Shepherd, which are known for their faithfulness and high activity level (one thing my hubby wanted), as they are farm dogs/sheep hearders by nature. We happened to find the breeder in the newspaper and she was not even 10 minutes away from base, where we were living in on-base housing.

We went that night and about 30 minutes later, we had our puppy. He was the only one left in his color (which is called Blue Merle) and we immediately fell in love. Like with all puppies, adjustment took a few days. The first night, he had to sleep with Jason's clothes because they had the scent of his siblings still on them from where we played with all of the puppies. The next day, after Jason headed off to work/school, I took little Patches out to pee, ate breakfast and fed him, and went up and got in the shower, taking him with me since he was still so new and little. Oh my, what I didn't expect is for him to cry and moan and whine the second that the shower curtain closed! I was trying to hurry so that he would stop crying, but as I was washing my hair, I heard the wimpering stop. I look down to see my precious puppy sitting in the tub right at my feet with his eyes closed to keep the water out, but just as happy as he could be that I was back in his presence. It was like that from then on, always wanting to be right by our side. He did eventually stop taking showers with me, but everytime one of us got a shower, he had to be lying right outside the tub.

He learned fast. I knew Aussies were smart, but my goodness! He was house trained within the first week! He learned how to shake hands, sit, lay down, roll over and play dead, speak on two different commands, stand, wait patiently for the treat that we would lay on his paw, and he would even push me from behind to make people laugh. We even taught him how to bring items to us. For example, if I was upstairs and Jason was downstairs and I needed my phone from down there, he'd give it to Patches and tell him to go find "momma" and within a few seconds, I'd have my phone. We were working on the military low crawl with him when we left California. He loved it out there, so much land and so many open spaces for him to run. He even went rock climbing with us one weekend, and was better at it than me! Jason would play frisbee with him in the field at the end of our street for hours, just running and running. In the desert of California, it gets HOT during the day, close to 120, but the evenings and nights were so nice. We'd take him on walks almost every night. If there was any way to take him to wherever we were going, we would. He LOVED the car and loved to ride. Any time we let him out the front door, he'd run to the car door and wait. He even rode across country from California to NC and loved every second. He had become part of our little family.

On the long car trip home from California...

I say these things in the past tense because we no longer have our sweet Patches.

A cruel someone took him from us, we don't know who, we don't know why, but they did. He was stolen and we never found him. We haven't since gotten another dog. It was very hard for both of us because we just loved Patches so much. All we can hope for is that he is ok and that whoever went to the trouble of taking him treats him well.

We plan on finally getting another dog soon. Both of us have grown up with dogs as pets and can't stand not having one around. Once Jason gets back, we are going to get another Aussie puppy. We are stuck on the breed, Patches spoiled us to his good nature and peppy spirit. We already have a breeder picked out who is helping us by trying to have a litter around the time of his return. She has even promised us first pick and a discount to show her appreciation for Jason serving our country. We will again get a little blue merle boy. His name...Taz.