I don't spend much time on introductions, though I really should. In this case, it is the personality coming out in her latter years that brings more laughter to the silly dog who has been with us for over ten years now. This is Hopper Spark. She was hit by a car out on the reservation right after I began working there, and she ended up with us while we tried to nurse her back to health. Whether I simply could not find her rightful owner, or being new out there, looked in all the wrong places, Hopper is still here with us.
When she came home, we had to reset her growing front leg each day after she continually chewed off the bandages. When I first brought her in, and sat her in the floor to begin pulling off ticks and watching her for shock, I told Callie Jo and Vegas that she was hurt, and just a visitor, and that we would care for her until she went to her home. The other two helped me look after her, and until Hopper tried to usurp Callie's place with Charlie, there were no cross words between the three.
Once Hopper could get up on her casts, she tried to follow Bailey through the house, wanting to be a kid dog. She never once chewed on the house, or poddied in it. Which was good, because Charlie had NOT authorized this new addition. He was away, and busy in the wake of 9/11, and I was pregnant. After Wyatt was born, and Hopper was seemingly not very temporary, Callie Jo let Hopper know that Wyatt was hers. Odd how it works that way, but I could not have found a better best friend for Wyatt Clay.
As Wyatt grew, he went through a time during Charlie's travels for the military in which he stuttered, then did not speak, then slowly began to speak again. Through it all, his best friend, the one who he would come home and sit with, cuddle with, and first began to talk to again, was Hopper Spark. According to her, the boy can do no wrong. He nearly smothered her with hugs, worrie dover her when she got valley fever, wandered the property with her side by side. If I come home during the day while he is at school, she follows me around grunting at me that I am a bad mama who left Hopper's kid somewhere.
After Wyatt spent a year feeding and giving the neds to the dogs (under supervision, of course), he earned his first chickens. Hopper wander with him through feedings. One of her vices- she likes to sneak eggs. She will gladly steal a favorite nesting spot from a hen if it looks comfy, and knows all the latest hiding spots for eggs. We have learned to try to remain a step ahead of her!
Aside from snatch the eggs, Hopper's favorite past times are sleeping on all the dog beds stacked together (or falling off them), and hiding shoes. Some dogs play fetch, Hopper Spark steals the chore shoes from the shelves by the back door, and hides them around the property, with special attention paid to Charlie's- those are filled almost completely with dirt. When Charlie comes home, she wags her tail at him until he begins walking around finding the shoes, walking behind him wagging her tail.
They have now taken to calling it their game, and I am beginning to think that, as much as we all miss Remington, Charlie is coming to look forward to their little ritual in the game they play while the kids feed their animals and I tend to my greehouse and garden each evening. Despite the leg that never healed quite right, and her ongoing health issues, Hopper is still going strong as she gets ready to turn eleven. She snores loudly, and knocks things with her thumping tail. And she might not play fetch, but she is training Charlie to. Gotta love it, and I still couldn't have picked a better best friend for Wyatt Clay. Thanks again, Callie Jo, and Karma, too.
