We have been married 61 yrs. and our dogs have been our children. We have had 4 Poodles, Chipper, Onyx, Chico, and Nick. They all were precious and it was so hard to give them up. Nick came to us in a very unusual way. A friend in another county was on his way to work one morning in December and spotted him running up the road from a nearby Rest Area on I-75. When he got home that day the Poodle was in the yard with his dog. He advertised for 30 days and no one claimed him.
Nina’s brother lived near by and had seen the dog and recognized him as a poodle. Knowing that we had to have our last one put to sleep due to colon cancer about a year prior to this, called us and said they were going to take him to the pound. Without hesitation we told him to tell them that we would be there shortly to get him. We went up there and he had been sleeping under the porch with their outside dog and had so much red mud on him you could hardly tell what color he was. We got him and took him to the groomer that had been doing our other dogs. When she got through with him she brought him out and set him on the counter and said, “you have a very good dog here, I did not have to put a lease on him to clip him”. We brought him home and about thirty minutes. after we got home, the phone rang and to our surprise he jumped up on the couch, reached over to the telephone on the end table picked it up with his mouth, layed it down and
started barking into the mouthpiece.
To say we were shocked is putting it mildly. This phone became his phone and from that time on we could not beat him to the phone. When we would get to the phone our friends would be talking to him. Since it was Dec. 18th when we got him we gave him a name of St. Nicholas and called him Nick.
A local Vet. guessed at his age as about two yrs. old. That was in 1993 and he became a celebrity when a local newspaper reporter was given our phone no. and told him he needed to call that no. Of course when he called Nick answered and when I got to the phone he was asking Nick if he could speak to me. He came out and interviewed us and Nick and wrote an article that when published in the paper and then Ga.Public Radio in Atlanta Ga,heard about it and called and put his story on the air. We had 300 cassette tapes of this that was sent all over the country.
I realize that this is rather long article but I could never put in words what little Nick meant to us for the almost 14 yrs. that we had him. On May 30th 2008 Nick’s little heart gave out on him and we rushed him to the hospital but he died in my arms while the Dr. was examining him. This is one of the hardest things to get over that we have ever experienced.
We loved all our poodles but Nick was so different and showed love for everyone that ever knew him,and every one loved him. We try to look at his passing as a gain for Heaven. I feel that in these days when things are so bad that God is getting so many phone calls that He needed some help in answering the phones.
Love you NICK,
| Dub & Nina Simmons |