Posted By Ray Prichard ~ November 9, 2007
Pat and I are very much dog people. Many years ago we decided we did not want to have children. Somehow, in our 35 years together, we have become parents to nine dogs, who we always refer to as puppies, never dogs.
We got our first puppy in 1977, a golden retriever mix who we named Jerome. His mother had her first litter too early and the nine pups in the litter were literally killing her with their demands for milk. We took him home at four weeks and he was so little he could hide on the floor under the kitchen cabinet overhangs. He was our first child and filled our lives with joy for 14 years.
For the first seven years he was an “only child”. Then one day in 1983, I was going to see a client and while driving in west Houston on I-10 (the Katy Freeway) and looking ahead I saw a little dog running at breakneck speed in the inside shoulder, obviously panicked by the traffic noises. Luckily, I was able to slow down and get my truck into that shoulder lane, stop and get out and stand on that shoulder as the dog ran towards me. I was not sure how much of a panic it was in and if it would try to run around me, going into a traffic lane. As it approached I started talking very slowly, telling it not to panic and to stop so I could help. To my surprise, it stopped and sat down and let me approach. Still talking softly, assuring it was safe, I asked if I could pick it up. 
It was a little girl, part whippet, sleek and soft brown. I picked her up and put her in my truck, on the right front floorboard. As I drove on, I kept talking to her and she lay calmly on the floorboard. I took her home and we had her for the next 14 years. Her full name was Miss Katy Freeway, but we called her Freeway. She and Jerome bonded immediately and were never apart for the next seven years.
On Christmas Eve in 1984 I had to go to the local grocery store one afternoon. As I walked across the parking lot, I noticed a man and a little boy standing together, holding a pretty little black and white puppy on a leash. The puppy had a big red bow around her neck and the little boy was holding a sign that read “Please give my puppy a home for Christmas”. She was a beagle and dachshund mix. I talked to the man about the dog and gave him my card, telling him if nobody wanted her by the time he had to leave to go home, call me and I probably would take her. 
I then walked across the parking lot, got in my car, drove up to the man and said, “I will take her now, please”. I took her home and she immediately walked up to Freeway and Jerome to introduce herself and let them know she was here to stay. At first we called her Eve but after a couple of days of watching her scarf down her food like a vacuum cleaner, then lick the other two dishes to make sure nothing had gone to waste, we changed her name to Miss Piggy. She and Freeway and Jerome became fast friends. 
Those are only the stories of our first three babies. Including the current three we have there have been nine wonderful children in our lives. Maybe I will be able to tell you about those last six. We have had to have five of them put down when old age overcame them. Freeway had a stroke and died in my arms while I sat at the kitchen table. She was 14 when she died. All of the six were cremated and we have their ashes in urns in our house. Pat sleeps with the collars of those deceased puppies on her bed post.
Through the years we have worked with a local dog adoption group in Kingwood and fostered several dogs. I have stopped on the side of freeways and on the shoulder or curb of many streets to rescue dogs that are lost on the roads. It is unbelievable to me how many people just drive by never trying to help those lost creatures. Our group, Twyla’s Friends, has an adoption day every Saturday to try to find homes for our fostered dogs. There is never an end to the number of lost or abandoned dogs that we find faster than we can find homes for them.
Miss Ruby was a foster that our group had rescued. She was a really old miniature chow mix, nearly bald from skin disease, nearly blind and practically deaf. We were asked to foster her for a weekend and we could not give the baby up. We got her skin cleared up and most of her hair grew back. She learned her way around inside the house and to walk around in our back yard and never get near the pool edge, as blind as she was. She may have been selectively deaf because she never missed a meal call. We only had her 14 months before old age took her but we made sure she knew she was loved. We had to have her put to sleep when her hind legs gave out and she could not pull herself up with her weak little front legs. Every puppy that we have had, when it came time to give them rest, we held in our arms and talked to them as the vet gave them that final shot. They all died knowing they were loved.
That leaves our current brood, Luther, our border collie, Miss Maggie, a corgi mix, and Charlotte , our Dalmatian. Two of them are now 14 years old so we are afraid they will not last much longer.
When I was young, my daddy had an older brother, my Uncle Jesse and his wife Aunt Alice. Their twin girls had died at childbirth in the early 1920s so they did not have any kids. They had two dogs that they treated like their children. I remember some friends and members of the family would talk about them like they were some sort of weird creatures, the way they treated their dogs. Now I am sure some of my friends and family may talk or at least think that about Pat and me, but I have a great respect for my aunt and uncle. Without sounding corny or sacrilegious, I want to say that I seriously feel that saving and caring for dogs has been a path God put me on.
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