[Dailydrool] My First Basset

Thu Mar 9 19:44:33 PST 2017

First healing drool to all those in need of it. Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.

This is a fun thread, and I am copying Riche on it as well, since she asked for stories. I apologize for going on so long. I've been on the list since about 2002.

My first basset was Edsel, a beautiful, and overweight red and white, who chose me in August of 1991.

Now as a bit of background, I'd loved the breed since I was a little boy, I think I saw a postcard of a mama basset and her puppies in a laundry basket when I probably was no more than 7, and got my mother to buy it for me. Yes, I still have the card over 50 years later. Then my Aunt and Uncle got a basset a few years later, named him Hubert as he was brought home on election night, 1968 and Hubert Humphrey looked so sad, much like the dog. Naturally, I loved going to visit and wanted one of my own. That was not to be for some years, however.

I got Edsel in a time of duress back in late August 1991, I was called in from a day of vacation to be told my job of eleven years had been eliminated, and people dong the same work would be staying. I was in shock, I had 
phoned several friends, one suggested that perhaps it was time to get that basset that I had been talking about for some time. I was not wise to BYB and basset rescue, so my friend called an ad in the paper, and  off we went. I had told my mother I was going to get a basset puppy, she really did not believe me. These folks who had them were not frequent breeders, and that group of seven baby bassets had to be the cutest thing I had seen. One seemed sort of shy and kept coming back to me, Edsel had picked me out and came home that night. I was not really aware of backyard breeders or rescue at the time.

We got him out in the country, and stopped back and my friend's house. He had sat in her lap from where we got him. Since I still had a 20 minute plus drive, we put him in a cat carrier and in the hatchback, as it would not fit up front with me. Edsel cried a bit about halfway home, and I kept talking to him. When I came in to the house with that cat carrier, my mother said, you didn't. I said, I did, and carried the carrier into the house and the dining room.

He was scared to come out of the carrier, so I raised up the end and out he rolled. He was home, my mother melted and he was totally home and knew it too. About an hour later, my father came in from seeing the local baseball team play, he was a bit surprised as well, but adapted well. My parents lived with me, both elderly. Ed immediately wormed his way into my mother's heart and rather quickly did the same to my father.

If I had known about the Daily Drool then, I would have already been armed with the collective knowledge about these great hounds. Edsel was a joy from day one. He was quiet, shy, not a counter cruiser and just a bundle of love. 

I took him with me downstairs for the night to where I was working on my computer, he laid down at my feet and promptly fell asleep. I quietly finished my work about an hour later, and went over to the couch, about 5 minutes later, he woke up, and slowly waddled over to where I was. He knew he was home, and safe and with his daddy.

Edsel quickly showed us the way of slave training, although we had no idea that was what was going on. He was 8 weeks old, but he knew the "look" already, and pretty much had us all wrapped around his paws. We thought the poor dog had gone crazy when he did the basset 500! We learned that you never did anything for him that you did not intend to continue, as Ed remembered everything and fully expected it each and every time.

The little 9 pound puppy grew so quickly, you could actually see him grow over a few days. At eight months, he dislocated a hip and the vet told us he would probably get arthritis there. It was indeed the case, it slowed him down, but never stopped him, he was a fighter. Ed loved taking his grandfather for a walk, it was the daily (and in the summer, nightly) ritual. Each of us had our jobs to do for him.

My mother was still amazed at how well he could smell things. Edsel would be laying outside on the porch and she would open a frozen kielbasa, Ed was knocking on the door.

He loved to eat, and with his arthritis, could not walk as much as he or we'd have liked, but he tried. I can still see him lying down across the street with my father standing there patiently while he rested. Edsel was known throughout the neighbor hood. He'd sit outside when it was time for the school bus and just cry as some neighborhood girls walked up the road. They almost always came to make over him.

The year he turned 11, I had this feeling he would not be with us a year later, nothing specific, just a feeling. I took him to the vet for his annual in late April, he had lost some weight, which was good, but otherwise the vet said he was fine. By early September, he was sick, we originally thought he was just suffering from the arthritis, but this was worse he was not eating. We were really concerned and called his vet to bring him in, the vet was out, so I 
had to take him to another vet.

It was not good, cancer. Ed was so ill, the vet said there was nothing we could do, he likely would not survive any operation. The vet said it was our decision to send him to the bridge, now or wait, it would probably be a matter of days. We could not make that decision yet, and brought him home for his last days at home. We needed time to say goodbye. Edsel had a number of special people that he would want to see as well.

Bringing him home was a struggle, I finally got him in the house and he laid in the kitchen the rest of the day, he struggled and got up and managed to get to the dining room in the same spot where I had dumped him out of the cat carrier just over 11 years before, he dropped there. He stayed here for the next three days. His friends came to visit and say goodbye, I stayed with him on the floor 24/7 until finally I knew it was time. We bundled him up and carried him to the vet for his final trip. Once he got in the dining room, he never got up again. I kept hoping he would just pass on his own, but that was not the way he wanted it, I guess. Now he is at the Rainbow Bridge with both his grandparents. I'm sure as soon as my father arrived, Ed was barking to go for a walk.

I knew I'd have another basset someday, that day occurred four days short of exactly four years to the day after Ed left for the bridge, when my new wife and I adopted Bosley, an owner surrender. Bosley has his own story and I won't share it here, but he had to go to the bridge in November 2015. I will have more.

Ken Miller