Byron

Even the way we came to find our Byron was a little strange. I have had dogs all my life and since my marriage in 75 my husband pretty much accepted this as yet another idiosyncrasy that had to be tolerated in the name of peace. I believe that he loved the dogs but he did not take an active interest in them. This changed dramatically one cold winter’s eve when we heard scratching in our garage. I thought it was cats after the stored cat food out there but was a beautiful liver spotted pointer. I could tell that it was only 4 or 5 months old and looked at my husband with a practiced beg. “No” he said "not this time," and waffled on about us having a neon sign out the front of the house that only animals can see “mugs live here”. Accepting that he meant it I gave the puppy food and water and tried to find it’s owner. Somewhere around 3am I awoke to find my husband missing. I found him in the kitchen cuddling the dog...I did not say anything and left the new love birds to it. The next day my husband and I ardently looked for her owners but were more than happy to keep her if they could not be found. After just enough time for the three of us to fall in love the owners turned up. They were a young couple and were not living In the easiest of conditions to keep a dog. I felt awful when they took her because I knew that it was not going to work out for any of them. “Amber” turned up on our doorstep 3 more times after that but each time I rang the owners and they came to get her. The worse thing was that they did not live that near to us and Amber was walking 2 miles to get to us it began to tear my husband apart. Then we heard nothing and I prayed that they had found somewhere else to live that was better suited to owning a dog. My husband still mourned her and finally I suggested that he get a dog of his own. At first he was not keen and then I showed him a picture of a Weirmaraner and he was hooked. We found a lovely couple quite near us who bred Wiermaraners and reserved a dog from the next litter. At first my husband chose a rolley polley pert little guy who was without doubt the largest of the litter. However Byron had other ideas and sat at my husband's feet wagging his tail and making little noises until my husband was forced to pick him up and well that was that. It was wonderful to watch their relationship grow over the next few months. Byron did laps with his dad every morning until they would both fall down in the grass exhausted. After shots e.t.c It became walks and Byron would sulk when his dad had to go to work. I had been worried how my dog a large black groendale would take the new arrival since for ten years he had been the only dog and therefor king. I need not have worried he seemed to take it upon himself to deal with Byron’s formal training and I have some wonderful photographs of Byron trying to keep up with Max. If Byron disturbed Max’s nap he would just put his paw on Byron rendering him helpless until he calmed down. One night when Byron was about six months old we awoke to a horrible gurgling noise and leapt out of bed to see Byron clawing at his mouth and making a choking noise. Since Byron would often fall asleep on his back with a bone in his paws we both thought that he was choking. My husband pried his mouth open and reached in-Byron’s jaw sprang shut with my husband's hand in there. Meanwhile I had phoned our vet and my husband took the phone from me dripping blood and shaking badly. The vet said that it was obviously a fit and whatever we did do not get near his mouth my husband explained how he had found that out. The next 6 months we seemed to keep him and lose him a thousand times never knowing whether to let him go or keep fighting to keep him. Finally one night my husband and I spent the whole night in the garden with him so that he would not hurt himself until my husband screamed at me to call the vet and have him do what we now felt was unavoidable. I searched in vane for our vet and finally decided to phone a different one out of sheer desperation. Dr. Lewis was very different to our vet young with new ideas and a very keen attitude. He suggested that we leave Byron with him and let him see what he could do before we gave up. We thought about the courage Byron had shown walking round and round the garden because he knew if he laid down they would start all over again and decided to give it a try. After we had got the levels of his drugs under control Byron’s fits came under control resulting with him having a cluster or two twice a year. It seemed as if he had been given back to us. A side affect of the drugs was an insatiable appetite scary since he had that already... He could open cupboards at will he could slide food of the table without you seeing him do it once he stole 9 steaks ready for the bar b que and I had to feed my guests hamburgers but he always made me laugh it was the way he would look at you. Other than the food thing he was usually a good dog protective without being aggressive and just like a well known credit card he was everywhere you wanted to be.

Sometimes it would drive me crazy I would ask my husband to take him out just so I could have a bath or use the bathroom without an audience. The best part of all was that he did not know he was a dog leave alone a hunting dog. We would explain it to him but he would go out and do his business in the rain faster than you could open and shut the door. His ears made a great barometer for the outside temperature. The only thing he “pointed” to was next door when they were cooking dinner. When Byron was nearly four we lost our old boy Max. I knew that the time had come but after 14 years I took it very hard. Sadly not as hard as Byron he actually grieved he would search the yard and spend hours just staring in to space Dr. Lewis advised some kind of anti-depressant but we felt that he was already on enough medication. We decided to get another dog but it took 5 months before I could really think about it. Eventually we found some good groendale breeders in Pennsylvania and off we went. I picked a very tough little guy and named him Connor. Things did not go well with the boys at first but in time they became cliché brothers fighting sometimes and yet miserable if separated. One day I lost Connor I could not figure out how he had gotten out. Byron was barking madly in the direction of my neighbours yard and I was getting frantic when I realized that it was not next door he was barking at but the above ground pool. It was a very cold and icy November day and I knew before I even looked in there how bad it was going to be. I was right Connor was just floating in there and I jumped in and shoved him out with all my might. As the poor dog landed on the patio Byron licked him madly and I rang the vets. Suddenly he was moving albeit crawling and although it left him with a spot on his lungs for a while he returned to full health thank goodness. I wanted to rush out and buy Byron a life guard shirt but my husband said no. After that Byron was not keen on anyone swimming and would run round the pool barking a warning and driving us crazy. When I found out I was pregnant in 96 it was to say the least a shock. We had our son who was nearly 18 and as you can imagine we were a little apprehensive. For one thing our boys they were our babies and you hear such horror stories but I had to give it a try. Byron was the biggest worry we had babied him so much when we thought that we might lose him that I truly thought it would be a nightmare. Well how wrong can you be he loved her so much it was unbelievable. Over the next few months Elise and Byron formed a mutual appreciation society. She would break a cookie in half give him one and eat the other. I never had to clean up the area around her high chair he would make sure it was spotless. When she began to walk at ten and a half months she would use him to pull herself up and he would stand very still and let her. He would kiss her constantly and watch every move she made so that he was sure she was O.K. If she cried he would look at me as if to say “well do something”. Byron had always been protective in a subtle way. If strangers came in he would go and lie down but if they moved he would open one eye just to let them know he was watching them. Everyone loved Byron because he was to say the least a character. Just a few short days ago Byron went in to a cluster of fits. I knew from the get go these were different more violent more intense and even when I had given him the maximum dosage of Phenobarbital the vet had advised they showed no sign of abating. I rang my husband at the hospital and he came home and tried to help but there was nothing he could do. The next morning we took Byron to the vets during which time he seemed to come back his tail wagged when we spoke to him but it was heart breakingly obvious that he could not see. I tried to hold him in the van but he wanted to climb in his dad's lap. I just prayed that we would get their quick. Our vet tried hard over the next few hours to save him but we all knew that we would have to let him go.