Ode to Odie

Our family is in love with Odie.

We've had our Cavapoo for nearly a year, and he has a special bond with each of us.

He naps next to Dave's head while Dave is watching TV in the beanbag. Caleb plays with him by making quick movements and gets Odie running in circles. Harrison and Laurel give him a baths. Laurel is adept at putting on his harness and taking him for walks. I taught him to fetch my newspaper from the end of the driveway each morning.

The fact that we have a dog at all is amazing. A miracle, really. We were done with dogs. We'd had two puppies that we'd gotten from my parents, Abraham and Isaac. After about a year Abraham learned how to jump the fence, so he went back to the farm. Isaac stayed longer. He was an outside dog, but for some reason he was inside for a while one day and happened to pee on our bed. He was gone the next day. Dave gave him to a coworker.

Then a few years later we had Zoe, our big Great Pyrenees. She was the inspiration for our kindergartener to start his own business, "Caleb's Poop Scooping Service."

Caleb used his new tools at his Aunt Julie's and Aunt Jenny's back yards. However, after a few years the novelty of a dog and a business wore off. Both were neglected. When Great Pyrenees are neglected, they turn to barking. Incessantly. We got her a bark collar, which worked for a while, but then she developed a sore on her neck because we'd neglected to take off the collar. She's in a better place now. Dave placed an ad and we gave her to a family that had 40 acres.

And we swore that we wouldn't have any more dogs. And it was easy to keep our word, because we have a lawn service so we were reminded constantly of what dogs can do to a backyard when we mowed yards where people kept pets. And when we happened to step in a fresh pile and smelled it in the truck for the rest of the day, we would look at each other and say how thankful we were that we didn't have dogs.

A terminally ill customer of ours was having trouble caring for his dog Chloe, a Jack Russell terrier. He doted on Chloe, so we offered to give her occasional baths and take her on walks so he would be able to keep her as long as possible. I wondered if he had a plan for where Chloe would go when he would have to give her up. Chloe was 12 years old, so I knew the commitment would be short. Even though I grew up on a farm and firmly believed a dog's place was outside, I offered to take in his house dog. He told me that a neighbor had already spoken for Chloe, so I was off the hook. Our son Harrison, who was hoping for a dog, was crushed.

Then Dave went camping with our friends the Reeds, who brought along their adorable new Cavapoo puppy, Cora. Dave loved how Cora sat on her owner Danita's lap the entire weekend, and he was sold on their tales of how she was so smart they had trained her to ring a bell when she needed to go outside. Since she was half poodle, she didn't shed.

The Reeds told Dave they'd gotten Cora from a breeder in Missouri, so he started monitoring their website. When they discounted a 12-week old spotted puppy named Casey, Dave decided he was the one. He said we should take a road trip that Friday to pick him up. I had my doubts. Huge reservations, actually, in the form of 2,000 sq. ft. of new carpet that we'd just installed when we'd moved into our new house only a few months previously. New puppies and new carpet were not a good combination, in my opinion.

But the day before Dave wanted to go to Missouri, we got some news. It was one of those things that you hear about after the fact, so you can't really do anything but just feel sick. But I knew I would be thinking about it all day, and suddenly the thought of getting out of town with my hubby and processing it together on an all-day road trip was exactly what I wanted to do.

So we ended up in Carthage, Missouri, and brought home our little bargain puppy. I tried not to think about "Marley and Me," because their bargain puppy turned out to be much more than they bargained for. I held the scared little Casey in my arms the whole way home. The kids were truly surprised and happy to finally have a dog. We tried out several names. Nothing stuck until the puppy jumped and awkwardly fell flat on his face, so he became Odie just like Garfield's nemesis in the comics.

At Easter I asked my nephew Lincoln if he remembered our doggie's name. "Yes," he said. "Coyote."

On the way home from Missouri, the puppy had pooped and pottied when we stopped at a rest stop. "Maybe this will be easier than I thought," I said to Dave. Of course, those were famous last words. We have gone through all of the usual trials in trying to train a puppy. However, since our kids are teenagers, they actually can take care of him, and since they knew Mom was on the fence about the whole thing in the first place, when he would have accidents--and he did, including diarrhea until we got him used to his new puppy food--they would silently go for the spray bottle of carpet cleaner and a roll of paper towels.

We have adjusted and included Odie in our routines. Dave, Caleb and I love watching him race excitedly around us as we put up our equipment after returnlng from mowing all day. I catch the kids slipping him bits of food under the table, but I have been known to let him lick out my empty yogurt containers. Lately I've been taking him to the bank drive-thru when I make deposits, because they give out doggie treats. And that, my friends, is nothing short of a miracle.

Odie waiting patiently for his Milk-Bone to come at the bank drive-thru.