(this is sort of long, so read when you have the time... and if you love dogs...)

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Koko
February 3rd, 2012
Dedicated to my best friend on Earth, my dog Koko
GuitarGuy49


It was September (or October) of 1996. I had just moved into the house way up on Macktown Gap Road in Dillsboro/Sylva, North Carolina. From the north direction, the dirt road we lived on wound down the side of the mountain in a series of sharp switch-backs, with no guard rail. It was about a 3-4 mile journey in that direction until you met up with the main paved highway, then into town. In the southern direction, there were a series of ascending, chatter-bumped switch-backs along the dirt road, then right at the peak of the mountain about one mile south, the road was paved and followed Sutton Branch Creek from its artesian well beginnings to its crescendo enveloping the next several miles until it emptied into the Little Tennessee River that ran along side the town of Dillsboro, North Carolina.

From the top of our mountain, in the winter when the post-fall leaves had cleared, you could see for several miles to the north, east and to the south. To the west was yet another mountain peak that was at a higher elevation than our home at the 4,000 foot elevation. We rarely, if ever, got any traffic up in our world, it was a mountain retreat which also homed our family-owned vacation rental. We got $500 bucks a week for the rental, and after just one year of renting, we were booked 12 months out of the year. I don't remember the exact day that Koko showed up at our property, but it was just over sixteen years ago in September or October of 1996.

One thing that came of living in such a secluded place is that it became a haven for lost and abandoned dogs. I never honestly figured out if it was that the dogs had wandered so far from the village below and just couldn't find their way home, or if evil people had actually driven up our switch-backed dirt road, and dropped off their unwanted pets in some type of cursed abandonment. Whatever the case, if some evil person abandoned Koko, then they gave up on a million dollar dog. We noticed not too long after she showed up at Macktown Gap that she was soon to bare a litter of puppies. Because she was so pregnant, I have always figured that is why the evil idiot dropped her off. I guess some people are so lame that they can't deal with puppies. I can't tell you how much joy eight little rug-rat doggies can be, all running about the property, close by mama, and all licking, nibbling, whining, barking in their little doggy pup bark way. It was our pleasure to accept the mama dog, and then to see her through her whelping period, giving the world eight beautiful bundles of joy.

It was no problem finding the new pups a new home once they were at the weening age, either. We took them in a cardboard box, mama dog in tow, to the local Wal-Mart, and sat outside the doorway with a sign "free puppies"... all eight were gone in less than ten minutes to (hopefully) loving homes of local residents. Now how hard was that? I've often thought I'd like to get my hands around the neck of the person that abandoned Koko on the side of our hill. Either to strangle them for the deed of abandonment, or to thank them for being so stupid to give up such a great dog.

For the next four years, she was a true "mountain dog." She was typically, mostly an outdoor dog, but she was also very comfortable next to our gas log fireplace, nestled near to the TV and our feet. Her big trick back then was to come by you, and lay her nose on your leg. Of course the resistance to petting her waxed thin, and then one paw would come up on the chaise lounge. Then another. Pretty soon she gained the bravery to nestle in right next to you up on the seat. She has always been a sucker for being petted. Such a pure spirit, undying love to any and all that would have her. I swear she is some secret kind of pure bred million-dollar dog. But she is just a lab-mix mutt that somebody else didn't want. I'm actually glad they didn't want her.

It was at our house on Macktown Gap that Koko got her "people training." She trained us to feed her, and she trained us to let her outside, haha. She also learned to shake hands with either paw by simply touching the side of her face, and saying "give me your paw." She was given a comfy doggie bed in her first years with us, and she soon learned the command "Koko, get in your bed." Of which she always without fail would comply, tail wagging and seemingly happy to do so. Of course, being a mountain dog, she also had free reign of the outdoor dimension. There were often times various odd draggings came back with her from who knows where up or down the side of the mountain. It might have been some kind of un-identifiable road kill she thought was a catch. Or, one time (I have no idea where she found it) she drug home an entire white-tailed deer carcass. As of to say, "look what I found out in the woods, daddy!!!" If it was stinky, or dead, or just not available to be passed by on the side of the mountain, Koko would find time to chew it, drag it, claim it, then we would either bury it or pass it to the garbage.

Dogs....

She had free reign of the entire side of the mountain until one day some ditty-dumb mountain biker discovered our secluded stretch of switch-backs and decided this was going to be his daily work-out place from then on. Well, we rarely got any vehicular traffic up this way, and when we did, Koko, the "Defender of Her Universe", would chase whatever car, tractor, 4-wheeler, truck -- or in this case -- mountain biker, that would pass by. One day, the mountain biker made a complaint to the sheriff that Koko had nipped at his leg. The sheriff came out and Koko had to spend three days and nights in "doggie jail" (at the dog pound) until they realized she wasn't vicious. We got her back, and then it was decided that a cable run would be constructed for Koko, a dog house would be in place, and she wouldn't be allowed to have free reign of the mountain anymore.

Talk about killing a dog's identity...

For the next few months, you can imagine the misery this free-spirited, loving, passionate-for-life dog experienced at the end of her chain and cable system. The cable was strung between two large poles in our backyard, which ran about 100-feet from end to end, then her chain was about 40-feet in length, but that was all the Earth she could now explore. Whenever someone would drive in or come home, you could hear Koko barking in the back yard, as if to say "welcome home, bark-bark, hey, I'm back here, come pet me, pleasssssse." I didn't much care for the idea of her being tied up, but the sheriff insisted, so we had to comply.

As events changed and I found gainful employment as a road-warrior contract field engineer for the phone company, when I was working on one contract in Mississippi in 2000, I had the idea of bringing Koko on the road with me. So when I came home on leave time, I gathered up an igloo-style doggie house in the box of my truck, a couple bags of cedar doggie bedding, had Koko hop in before I took off, and from that day until right now this dog has been by my side nearly every minute of every day. She road with me on all my contract jobs, she would either wait beside the truck as I did my field work, or would patiently wait in her passenger seat. She has sat in that truck seat for so long and through so many adventures that it is now "her spot." Today, if I offer anyone else a ride in my truck, she will edge over almost into their lap because that's "her seat." Twelve years later, I suppose she has claimed ownership of that little space on Earth.

Everywhere I have went for the last twelve years, she has been by my side. If I go to the grocery store, Koko comes along. If I got to church, she rides along and sleeps in the truck while I'm in praising God. Where-ever I drive, I never go alone, I always have my baby girl with me. "My little doggie" I call her. Or, since living in an Ann Arbor apartment, the city code here requires that pet owners pick up after their pets, I many times call her my "Pooper Dog.." I put food in one end, and she makes Lincoln Logs and Tootsie Rolls out of the other end for me to pick up. I guess it wouldn't be a full dog story if I didn't admit that I talk to my dog. When she does her business, sometimes I'll say to her... "what did you leave there, are you trying to buy the apartment complex? You just left a deposit on the land." LOL.

Today (February 3rd) is my birthday, and I turn 50 whopper years old today. Every year for as long as I can remember, since I have no idea when Koko's actual birthday is, I celebrate her birthday on my birthday. So, today is Koko's birthday, too. As best I can calculate, she had to be about one year old or a little more when she came to us with her (what was obviously) her first litter of pups. That was 1996. If you do the math, add one year to that (1995) then update to 2012, that makes Koko seventeen years old today. Maybe seventeen and a few months, who knows.

Now she is an older dog, but has incredible doggie health for her age. Her hearing is good, her eyes are good, she's a little lame on her right side back leg, but I give her glucosamine in her food, and it is doing wonders. She was particular happy to go outside today, and was running around like a puppy at the end of the leash. She is absolutely a nut when she is trying to tell me its time to go outside. To make the experience stick, I play a little game of (sort of) hide-and-seek with her before we go out, and she runs back and forth in the apartment, chasing me around, ruffing, and snorting in her doggie language.

I have spent so much time with this dog that I can tell what she wants just by the way she breathes. If she is hungry, she humpfs and puffs a certain way. If I am petting her and she would rather sleep, she has a small way she breathes to let me know. I have never studied doggie psychology or veterinary anythings, but I'm convinced this type of breathing communication is something dogs do with their young. When I cuddle with her, if I am too active, she will breathe a certain way until I settle down, then she stops that form of breathing. She also communicates several other ways. If she wants to wake me up when I am sleeping, she will shake her head so her ears slap the side of her face. Later in her life, this is how she wakes me up in the middle of the night if she has to go out. Another form of "I gotta go out" is that she will bump my elbow with her nose. This is especially effective for her if we are riding in the truck for a long distance. Its amazing, maybe I have a bit of "Doctor Dolittle" in me, and I can understand how animals talk. When you spend every minute of your life with an critter, you're definitely going to learn from them as much or more than they learn from you.

If she is hungry, she will go over to her food bowl and rattle it around. It is a metal bowl inside of a metal fixture that holds it, and she's learned that it will make noise if she bangs it with her nose. Or, if I am eating dinner, and she hasn't been fed yet, she will sit on the edge of her doggie bed and "hur-rumpf" at me. She does this thing with her nose, after inhaling some air, then she exhales it in a "hur-rumpf"-like sound when she is trying to tell me she is hungry. It is ultimately hilarious. Then if I "get the clue" and turn to her and say "Koko, are you hungry" she will sometimes rub first one side, then the other side of her face on her doggie bed. Then lay, paws-spread, chest to the bed, tail wagging. "Boo-lap"... she'll take her tongue and wrap it around her mouth, what might be mistaken for "licking her lips." This is her communicating that she is hungry.

As she's gotten older, she's gotten ultimately bored with regular dry dog food. So over the years I have mixed up some kind of doggie grool for her that consisted of something stinky and flavorful, along with her regular dry dog food. For many years the trick was to simply sprinkle her food with garlic powder, then add a cup or so of hot water. She would dig right in... A year and five months ago we were going for a walk up to the local Starbucks store and she got one of her claws hung up in between the concrete slabs of the Starbucks driveway. For the longest time I thought she had pulled a hip muscle or a knee joint, even the young first-year vet we visited (for a hundred bucks, ugh...) thought it was her old knee. But about a month later I noticed she was missing a claw on that back paw. It had fallen off some where along the way. So much for the new vet fresh out of college... it wasn't her knee, it was her claw. Well, during this set of events, (for what ever reason) she lost the love for garlic powder and I had to come up with some other stinky, yummy thing to try over her food.

I wasn't sure what it would be, and I was willing to try anything, as long as it just added stink and a little flavor to her food. One thing I've learned as a pet owner is that dogs love stinky food. The stinkier it is, the more they dive in and gobble. Garlic powder worked for a long time. The next stage of stink became a 1/3 cup of Kroger grocery store brand spaghetti sauce (99 cents for 26oz.). I'd fill her bowl with dry food, dump 1/3 cup of spaghetti sauce over the food, add 1 cup of hot water, serve. Gobble-gobble-gobble. That's how we got her foot all healed up and her on the eating game again. She stopped eating for a little while when she hurt her foot, and to get her interested in food, the spaghetti sauce over the food did the trick.

Not long after all this a friend told me that onions (and garlic) will build up a toxicity in dogs, depending on the size of the dog and the amount of onions or garlic. There is a sulfide inside the onions and garlic that dogs cannot digest. Nothing ever happened to Koko according to the comparison of what I researched on credible vet web sites, but I thought it best to change to something else that was stinky and yummy, and leave the garlic, spaghetti sauce, and people food... to people. The next venture was my discovery of Kroger grocery-store brand canned dog food (55-cents for 13oz.). Especially the ultra-stinky "beef and liver flavor." I now use 1/2 can of the canned food, fill the rest of the bowl with her regular dry dog food, get my water as hot as it gets out of the faucet and add hot water to the mix. I put the canned food in first, break it up with a spoon, add a glucosamine tablet (broken in half), then the dry food on top, water, mix it so a small chunk of the stinky canned food is on top... bah-duh-bing. I have not once prepared this and she wasn't sitting on the edge of her bed, waiting to chow down. Most times licking her lips and shaking her ears in excitement as I bring it on... haha.

These days, Koko sleeps a lot. She is an old dog, but she still learns new tricks. It wasn't until she was 8 years old that she was taught to sit up and beg. With her poochie-belly and silly side-hanging front legs, she looks completely ridiculous and hilarious when she does "Koko beg." She is also an expert on the leash these days. She is so gentle on the end of the leash, you hardly know she is there. If she is about to walk on the opposite side of a tree of street sign, all I need say (one time) is "this way" and she stops her path, crosses back around to my side of the obstruction, and we continue the walk. She usually walks just ahead of me, it used to be right at the end of the 25-foot retractable cable, but not so much that anymore. When she hurt her leg, it was kind of the opposite. It was like I was almost dragging her through her walk. You could tell she was in some pain, as she hobbled through her business and her little walk. This morning, though, she was bounding and dancing around. When there is a flick of snow on the ground, she scoops her head down and laps some into her mouth. I swear dogs are in some ways very similar to little children. She loves to eat snow. I'll say to her "what is that white stuff?" and she'll lap it up some more, its hilarious. Or she'll root into it if it is a bit deeper until she has a small pile of snow on her nose when she looks up. When she roots around like that, I call her "my little piggy dog." She's got those floppy lab-like piggy ears, and a big pot-bellied-pig almost bare belly. It fits...

Not only does she sleep, but she also snores. You can tell when she is really deep into her sleep time, she will exhale little puffs of air out of the sides of her mouth. She also sighs as she is relaxing. You'll hear her inhale, hold it, then let it out in a quick flash of air. There is something about listening to her breath as she sleeps that sort of makes me drowsy. Probably because she has curled up at the foot of my bed every night for years and years. I can lay down at night, and once I hear her start off to sleep, it makes me sleepy hearing her breath and sleep. Funny, the connection between man and doggie. I guess the folks who abandoned her missed out on all this great stuff. She is some kind of Guinness Book of World Records dog. Have you ever seen some kind of movie where the actor or actress had a dog, and all they had to do was move their hand in a certain way, and the dog knew what they meant for them to do? That's Koko. I guess she missed her starring role along side John Wayne...

I am so in-tune with this dog that I can whisper commands to her and she will comply. A few years ago I traveled to Mississippi to check on a special guitar a fellow had for sale. Koko was downstairs standing by the fireplace, and we were up in the vaulted section of the ceiling, in a little loft room. I told the man showing me his guitars, "check this out, I can whisper commands to that dog and she will obey." From probably about 100-feet away, and on the second floor of his house, I simply whispered, "Koko sit." and without a second thought, she simply put her butt to the floor. Just like that. Little did he know, she knew exactly where I was, and she was paying attention to me all the time.

I sincerely think the key to obedient pets is the time the owner is willing to spend with them. When I visit folks who have pets, I can tell how much time they spend with their pets by how much their pets listen to them. It is annoying to me when I might go to someone's house and their little lap dog is still barking and growling at me an hour or more after I first arrived. To me, that isn't the pet's fault, its the owner's fault for not spending more time with their animal. And I have learned the cure for the begging dog at the table. Its actually very easy. Just never, ever, ever feed your dog scraps when you are sitting at the table. It doesn't matter what I eat or when, Koko never pays me any mind. Because I have never fed her junk and table scraps off the table. How annoying is it when you go to someone's house and their little lap dog is climbing all over your leg at dinner time, begging for food. The dog simply associates the table, the setting down of food, and meal time, with the getting of scraps. This is not the dog's fault, either. Its the pet owner's fault for giving them junk off the table.

Have you ever been by someone's yard and their dog is constantly barking? I used to think it was the dog breed, or the idea that they were tied up outside. Nope, this is a pet owner issue, too, I'm sure of it. The dog is trying to tell the owner something. I lived next to a house in Mississippi where they had a Pit Bull tied up in their back yard. The poor dog barked 24 hours a day non-stop. As I started noticing, no one ever payed the dog any attention. As I noticed more, the dog never got any food or water, either. I then recognized the dog was barking due to duress and stress. That is when I decided to pick up the phone and call the sheriff. You just can't neglect a dog for days and days. It just isn't right.

Or have you been at someone's house and their big dog just won't stop barking? Pet owner issue. The pet owner hasn't spent enough time with their animal to get connected to the animal's world. Canines have a den instinct. Even in the wild, there is a commotion in the dog den when a family dog comes home. But when "all is clear" the den settles down and the barking and commotion stops. In the widl, dogs do not bark constantly for an hour when a new dog comes home. It is part of a dog's normal social structure. It does no good to yell at animals. Or beat them with a rolled up newspaper. You have to BE THERE FOR THEM. And one of my pet peeves with pet ownership abroad is that many people just get a dog and it is part of their furniture. When he or she barks, its an inconvenience to the owner, so they (even in a small way) mistreat the dog until it shuts up.

Koko barks, usually only when someone knocks at the door or comes over. OK, that's the natural side. I have learned to let her come to the door and see that everything is OK, then the command is simply, "Koko, get in your bed." And that is the end of it. She doesn't go on and on with the barking after I have made the decision that all is clear. But... during the alert session, there is no quieting her. Her instincts are on alert status, and even at her demure and melancholy way, she still barks. I thank God for this, actually. Living by myself in a not-so-kind world, I am glad to have a "Koko Security System." There aren't many burglars that are going to be willing to break into a house with a barking dog around. And unless she gets an "all clear" signal from me, she is going to continue to bark, and protect her turf. "Yay, Koko." it is amazing how brave dogs are...

She will also protect my truck when I am away. My uncle learned this the hard way one day. My truck was in his driveway, and Koko was sleeping inside. It was a decent fall day, so the temps were such that the windows were rolled up. My uncle came up to the truck, being a stranger not known to Koko, and tapped on the truck window. He told me later that he thought I had (quote) a "vicious dog" as she lurched at him from the seat to the point that he said her teeth made contact with the truck window. So much for bad guys trying to steal my truck with Koko around. Yay, Koko.

My mom loved Koko. Somehow her and my dog formed some kind of symbiotic relationship. Koko really spent the crux of her time with me, but when ever I would go visit mom and dad, she was mama's dog. My mom was always the one that appreciated that I had a dog. Now, going back in my history to the days when I was about 2 years old, we had a collie dog named "Lady" that (mom said) "used to follow me every where." If she ever needed to know where I was, all she had to do was look for Lady, and I'd be close by. I have a picture somewhere of me when I was that age, in a fenced in part of our yard, and there is Lady laying on the ground, and me playing nearby. I guess I've always had a connection to dogs. Now my mom has gone on to be with Jesus. Of the many things she left with me, I suppose it was the appreciation for dogs. My parents were never really "dog people" but they did have Lady almost fifty years ago. I don't recollect that they ever had another dog after her. Mostly our ten acres had my sister's horses, and a barn with a hay loft that when it was empty, we could play full-court basketball up there.

I'll always be a "country boy" for as long as I live. I'm not at all comfortable living in the city but it is the life I have for now. As God provides, I'll pay my rent and be content in my dwelling for now. But my heart and my mind often goes back to the mountains. I will never capture the exact life I had there sixteen years ago, as that life ended in a brutal divorce and is not one I will ever go back to. Nor can I ever return to that mountain on Macktown Gap Road. Neither can Koko ever go back to her original home there. But the memories are still there for both man and dog. Koko still remembers the chatter bumped dirt road. Any and every time I turn onto any kind of dirt road these days, her ears perk up and she makes a doggie fuss. Its like she remembers the mountain in North Carolina. Or, if she sees any kind of bicycle, she growls or even barks out loud. Other than that one mountain biker, there were also children just down the mountain who road bicycles and I think they used to mistreat her or something because she simply hates all bicycles to this day. For "fun" sometimes I will purposefully take her on a ride to downtown Ann Arbor where she can have a field day sitting in her truck seat and barking at all the U of M students riding their bikes. It seems to give her life to perk up and bark at bicyclers.

I have no idea how much longer Koko will be with me. I think one of the tricks to her long life are my prayers. Many times I have been petting her, and while laying my hands on her I'll simply ask God to give her a long, healthy life. 17 years old and in pretty good health, do you think God answers those prayers? I do. He takes care of our lives, and cares about the things in our life that mean something to us. He has taken care of my 2000 Chevy pickup truck, too. The day I drove it off the dealer lot in 2000, with 4 miles showing on the odometer, I was not hardly out of the parking lot, and I said a prayer dedicating my truck to God and asking him to watch over it. That was 12 years and (now over) 189,000 nearly maintenance-trouble-free miles ago. Do you think he answers those prayers? I do.

I know this has been a rather long e-mail. I imagine that some folks saw it's length and didn't get past the first paragraph or so... that's ok. I just wanted to send something out from my heart about my precious best-friend-doggie Koko. Not many dogs get to see 17 years of life. At the equivalent of 7 years of human life to one dog's life, she is now 119 human/dog years old. I wonder if she would make it to the Today Show? Probably not, she is only famous within my small circle of friends, and within these four walls.

I didn't get to see her be born, but I did get to witness not one but TWO litters of puppies from this wonderful dog. Then we had her spayed and she has been an awesome pet for the last sixteen years. The second litter was just as easy to give away at Wal-Mart as the first. For nearly two decades of my five decade-old life, she has been there. Sleeping at my feet, nuzzling at my wrist, chasing after squirrels at the end of her leash, dragging all forms of who-knows-what road kill into our yard, haha. She is one of the only things in my life that has been true, consistent, never-failing, and always there for me. And she has never ran up any expensive vet bills, either. Not only has she been blessed with long life, but outside of her regular rabies shot, etc... the only time I have ever had to take her to the vet for anything in 16 years was her time she was spayed, and when she pulled her claw at Starbucks, September, 2010. Other than that, 17-years of maintenance-trouble-free-miles.

My Koko dog.

"Koko... beg..." (hilarious...)

What an Awesome story to read!!!

Kuddos to Koko~~~~

She has surely lived a long life and found the perfect owner as well....

May you and Koko have many more years to spend together...


Happy Birthday to you & Koko......

My dog is definitely in tune with (from your list of doggie birthday things...):

"The best thing about getting old is pretending you don't here them call."

That's my dog after a certain time in the PM...

I can call her, she will be staring right at me... and she does not move or even twich... until of course I raise my voice, and it seems to pint some kind of poke in her presence... I think she is pretending to be asleep... or maybe she is sleeping with her eyes open... haha.

Wonderful story, thank you. All of us who have had dogs can identify with it.

You weren't sure whether dogs were intentionally abandoned on your country road. I am convinced they definitely were. I used to live in Maine, where lots of people come for the summer to the southern counties to play on the beaches. They often rent houses rather than stay in motels all that time. Every August, you can read stories in the newspaper about new renters moving in who discover a dog or cat in the house half dead from starvation. Or neighborhood store owners will notice an animal coming around for food after a couple of weeks. These tourists have intentionally left their pets behind because they just don't give a *****. I mean, if you were dumb enough to forget your dog in the hustle of going back to Massachusetts or whatever, you'd notice at least when you got home, right? And then you'd call someone to check, right? Not for these poor animals. Usually they do get placed in new homes, if they're not too starved by the time they're found.

You sound like a great dog owner and I hope Koko has many more years. I still miss my Woody who died over 5 years ago. He was the best dog in the entire world.