Tucker Goes To Heaven

Tucker was miserable living in my truck for the last few weeks. Although he went to work with me it meant staying in the parking lot. At night the truck was warmed with a portable electric heater plugged into a long extension cord. Tucker couldn't come into the house because Anne was having some serious allergy problems and the tests came back positive.

At the Oakton house, all the neighbors also had outdoor dogs Tucker could play with and 3+ acres of woods full of deer --not so in a Reston townhouse. He didn't have a fence or a leash and there was so much "wild" area he always found inconspicuous places to go to the bathroom. In Reston there are signs every 100-yards reminding you of the $200 fine for having a dog off leash and failing to scoop poop. Following a dog around with a plastic baggy, then feeling his warm feces ooze between your fingers as you scrape it up wasn't the first joy of dog ownership I imagined when I adopted him.

Tuesday night I drove out to hunt country (Middleburg) to check out a place. It is a mile down a dirt road lined by the stone fences of horse farms. After waiting for an opposum to finish strolling down the middle of the road, Tucker ran along side the truck without encountering another car. The husband is a ferrier and takes his other dogs to work with him as well as duck and goose hunts with them. As an aside, Tucker's earliest attempts at duck hunting were failures. When it came time to retrieve the ducks he was clueless and chose to go for a swim a half mile away where it was quieter.
Undeterred by his initial lack of success,he finally achieved success as hunting dog by jumping into the corporate pond with a fountain. One of the ducks flew into the 4th floor window of my office and broke its neck. Tucker retrieved it and we ate it for dinner.
The husband, wife, and their 5-year old son all ride horses.

I couldn't imagine Tucker being stuck in suburbia when he had the opportunity to play in fields and nearby ponds with a 2-year old black lab and a feisty jack russell terrier. There are no leashes and no fences. The neighbors are used to dogs strolling a mile or two from home. This was a problem in Fairfax County where people assume a dog loose is a dog lost --or a danger to itself or people. Out in Middleburg, as long as the dog doesn't bother the livestock or the chickens, nobody cares. If the dog likes eating feral barn cats, so much the better.
The wife's personnalized license plate is 'S&W 38' so I know she's quite capable of protecting Tucker and her two young human children from harm. I wish I could give Tucker to everyone that wants a great dog but even after running a mile he spent the next two hours wrestling with his new canine partners. Few people have the time or the environment for a dog to properly expend such energy in a constructive manner.
Although it was tough to say goodbye, I left smiling knowing Tucker was in a dog's heaven here on earth, where he can be a dog without well intentioned people trying to anthropomorphize him.

The family's Facebook link is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=40716&id=696538946