Jake the Three-Legged Wonder Wiener died this morning. He’d stopped eating some time ago, but fought the good fight as long as he could. We think he was 9 1/2.

I told Jake’s story a few years ago, but I’m going to repost it here. He was a special dog who danced with death more than once and walked (hopped?) away, but it was his time. We gave him the best life we could, and his memory will always be with us. I added some pictures at the end.

So here’s the story of Jake, and just remember that all dogs go to heaven. I know he’s there now. Maybe with all four of his legs back, who knows.

So, I gathered from everyone’s responses last week that the How I Met My Hubby story went over real well. Darn it all, I hate it when my sister Leah is so right all the time.

But I thought I’d keep the quirky story thing going this week by talking about my dog, Jake.

Jake the Three Legged Wonder Wiener.

That’s right. Three legs.

This is Jake’s story. Everyone has one, even the dog.

So Jason and I had gotten married and bought a house. And you know what that means for young professionals on the fence about starting a family right away – yup. A dog.

I grew up with wiener dogs and wanted to get one. Jason didn’t care a whole lot one way or the other, but he wanted veto power. My mom’s wieners were a handful back in the day (known as the terrorists from the family we adopted them from) and Jason didn’t want to be sued by people who’d had their ankles broken by a tiny dog with an size complex. And being a frugal bleeding heart liberal, I didn’t want to pay $500 for a purebred when there were plenty of perfectly good dogs in shelters.

Thus, the quest for a dog began. We lived in Chicago, which had a dedicated dachshund rescue organization. But for every wiener profile I brought home, Jason found problems. Not good with kids (pretty common for wieners). Antisocial. Kills bunnies in the yard. (Although, Jason fondly thinks of Red Fred, the dog who killed bunnies, when Jake sits 10 feet from a bunny and has no idea it’s even there. What he wouldn’t give for a bunny hunter these days.) Every dog was not right for our family.

So I broadened the scope of the search. Wisconsin wiener dogs. Indiana wiener dogs. Missouri wiener dogs. And Jason found problems with each and every one.

I kept searching. I enlisted the help of my sister Hannah. Hannah has the unique gift to find the most pitiful animal available and fall in love. So she started trolling Petfinder.com, where she’d gotten her high-strung cat, Dulcie (Love you, Dulc!). And I got an email from her. “He’s so cute!” she gushed. So I clicked on the link, and saw a cute little red wiener dog.

With no left front leg.

“He’s missing a leg!” I wrote back.

“But he’s so cute!” she repeated.

So I printed Jake off and took him home to show Jason. And the man went, (and I quote), “Awww.”

Problem was, Jake was in Tennessee, and this was December. So I contacted Jake’s keepers, Jerry’s Rescues, and they agreed to hold him until April (our vacation) if we paid $125 to cover the two for one cost of leg amputation and neutering. Oh, and we had to have a home visit to make sure we were appropriate people for a wiener dog.

Jason still rolls his eyes at that. We had to be interviewed by other wiener dog lovers to make sure we we’re some sort of deviant wiener dog fanatics. Although he did make them cookies. . . I love that man.

Anyway.

Vacation time approached. We planned our vacation around a trip to Tennessee. A few days in Nashville, then on to Lewisburg where Jake was at. We ate pralines and saw Little Jimmy Dickens do his thing at the Grand Ole Opry. And then we left the touristy parts behind and headed for the hills.

Literally. Lewisburg is a small burg, famous only for the Tennessee Walking Horse Hall of Fame, which is an actual Hall between the lobby of the National Tennessee Walking Horse Association building and the secretary’s office. A hallway with pictures.

And we had a few more hours to kill. We spent them in the Piggly Wiggly. And then we drove out to The Middle of Nowhere.

Cue freaky banjos playing ominously in the background.

Jerry’s house was way out in the hills, several miles from paved roads. No one but about 100 dogs were home when we got there, and they were all barking. Jerry apparently subscribes to the never-throw-stuff-away philosophy, popularized during the Great Depression, because there was stuff everywhere.

The banjos got a little louder.

We waited for an hour in our little car, rain pouring (of course rain was pouring). Finally, Jerry showed up. Picture Grizzly Adams holding a chihuahua, because that’s what he was.

“I’ll go get that Jake for you,” he said after we exchanged nervous pleasantries. “You don’t wanna come in the house . . .”

Somehow, I figured. I didn’t even want to imagine the carpet stains.

So he directed us to what looked like an outhouse with a shower curtain. “You stay here, out of the rain.”

I swear to all that is holy, there was a chainsaw in there. I knew we were agonna die, all for a three legged wiener dog.

But we didn’t. Jerry came out with a mildly nervous 12 pound wiener dog and told us the story.

A church secretary had found him tearing into the garbage behind the church, his leg dangling useless. He was on the verge of starving. She kept him for the day, but then took him to the city pound. Now, I’m not saying the pound people are heartless, but they have a job to do, and a mangled, half-starved wiener is not high on that to-do list. He was going to be put down that night because he was in bad shape.

Enter Jerry. “I stop by the pound every night to see if there’s someone who needs savin'” he explained as I only mildly quaked in terror in the shed with the chainsaw. “And, boy, did this one need savin’. Figure he only had another 15 minutes on that clock.” As you might have gathered, Jerry is one big softy beneath that Grizzly exterior.

Yup. 15 minutes. That close.

Jerry’s vet took off the leg – “jes’ a dangling by a tendon,” Jerry explained as my stomach turned – and tossed in the neutering, and three days later, put Jake’s picture on the web. Hannah found him two days after that.

It seems that Jerry had found Jake’s original people, but they didn’t want him back. I’m not sure if they dumped him at the side of the road, or if he ran off after the UPS truck (because let me tell you, he’s got it out for the UPS guy, bigtime), but he’d been hit by a car.

I like to tell the kids who say, “Hey! Did you know your dog’s missing a leg?” that he forgot to look both ways before he crossed the street. For the younger ones, I toss in how he forgot to hold his mommy’s hand.

Jason likes to respond by gasping dramatically and saying, “He is?? OH NO! Where’d it GO!” But he’s funny like that.

Every year, we send Jerry’s Rescues a Christmas Card and a check for saving our dog. They’re good people doing good work.

Now some of you might think I have a predilection for those who might be termed “special.” But it’s not just me. My sisters have dogs (and a cat) that all belong on a far shorter bus than Jake does, but we love them anyway. And just because he’s special doesn’t mean he doesn’t get tortured. Just look at the things I have done to my poor dog.

He drives.

I love his ears. The toddler does, too.

His ears get cold in the winter. I tried to keep them warmer. He hates it.

And this is my favorite picture of my dog. 12 inches of snow can be pretty daunting for a pup who’s only 8 inches tall.

We love Jake. My son calls him “Jakey Wiener Dog” and will stop mid-stride to hug and kiss him. Jake’s pretty okay with the kid, too, if only as a primary food source.

But there was one time he almost didn’t make it. And this just drove home the fact that Jake was lucky to have us.

Being purebreds, wiener dogs are suseptible to a variety of genetic flaws. They have a lot of back problems, what with being long and low. And we accepted that Jake’s problems might be worse after the accident and missing leg thing.

And true to form, he slipped two disks. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t stand, couldn’t even pee. I was 3 months pregnant and not exactly rational, but I refused to let them kill my dog. He’d come so far, I just couldn’t do it.

So we plunked down the $3,000+ smackers to have that dog fixed. So much for vacation that year. And you know you’re screwed when the surgical center has a 10,000 aquarium tank and marble countertops.

But they fixed my dog. And left him with another scar.

Jake’s probably about six, maybe seven now. He’s mellowed as he’s aged, unless someone rings the doorbell or the UPS guy drives by. (Nothing beats the UPS guy ringing the doorbell, in Jake’s opinion.) I don’t know how much time he’s got left. Maybe he’ll live to be 10, maybe 13. But I knew that going in – his time was shorter than a puppy’s might have been.

But that’s okay. Because he will have spent that time with us.

Jake the Three-Legged Wonder Wiener
2002 to 2011

In today’s modern era, what does it take to be a Real Cowgirl?

Beyond the obvious. Sure, it’s a heck of a lot easier to be a Real Cowgirl if one is in possession of any combination of the following:

1. A Horse (preferably with a western saddle)
2. Large Tracts of Real Estate west of the Mississippi River, especially those that are edged by miles and miles of barbed wire fences.
3. Cattle
4. A Pick-Up Truck (and not one of those mutant poser ones with a opalescent ivory finish that’s never earned its mud flaps, either. A *real* truck. Gun rack optional.) As an alternative, a Suburban is the only allowable SUV, and it better have a damn hitch on it.
And, of course, the clincher in the deal:
5. A Cowboy (bonus points if he says “Ma’am” with a tip of his hat to your mother every time he sees her.)

If you have more than two of those things, you are fully licensed to say things like “I’m fixin’ to brand some cattle” or “Let’s RIDE” and if anyone even thinks of smirking at you, you get to kick them in the shins with your cowgirl boots (authentic manure optional).

Alas, there may come a point when some amongst us long to be a Real Cowgirl but meet exactly none of the prerequisite Cowgirl requirements.

Alas. I long to be a Real Cowgirl. And I got nothing.

I used to be able to fudge the requirements. I grew up on a tract of real estate west of the Mississippi River. True, it was only 8 acres in the middle of a heavily wooded forest and had minimal fencing, but it was, in fact, land in the West. I didn’t own a horse, it’s true, but I mucked stables and groomed horses for some wonderful women who lived on the other side of the valley for the whole entirety of my teen-aged years. They paid me in peanuts and horseback rides. I rode English dressage, true, but I also rode Western and bareback (although these days, my inner thighs weep at the thought.) That, to me, was close enough to being a Real Cowgirl that I wore cowboy boots in public, on and off, for several years before Garth Brooks hit it big with all his friends in low places.

No more. I live on the east of the muddy Mississippi now. I haven’t been on a horse since my honeymoon. I married an accountant. (But at least he grew up on a farm. He’s got some street cred.) The largest beast I own weighs 15 pounds and only has three legs. (Although Gater is taller, he technically weighs less. Jake’s got that dachshund barrel chest.) For Heaven’s sake, I drive a Prius.

In other words, there is nothing–and I mean nothing–about me that is any part of a Real Cowgirl. The best I could do was some modestly lovely turquoise jewelery. That’s it.

Which is, in my opinion, sort of a problem. I write New Western romance novels. Novels that prominently feature a real cowboy/girl as a hero/ine. Why would anyone want to read New Western books by a non-cowgirl? Wouldn’t that be like listening to my grandmother do a hockey play-by-play?

So it’s not that I want to be a Real Cowgirl (although I do). I need to be one.

So I’m Cowgirling Up. Fake it until I make it, baby!

It started with the hat.

It fills me with great shame to admit that this hat is, in fact, my father’s hat, purchased almost 20 years ago on a family vacation out west. (He also bought boots, but those didn’t fit me.) Yes. My head is the same size as my father’s head. I’m not sure why this strikes me as a personal failure of femininity, but it does. Bigtime.

Anyway, the hat fit, and he gave it to me. Phase one in Cowgirling Up: Complete.

But here’s the thing. I didn’t have anything else. And I’m pretty sure that, whilst a Cowgirl could wear boots without a hat (see any Miley Cyrus video for proof), a Real Cowgirl does not wear a hat without boots. Like it would match my Birkenstock sandals, anyway.

Finally, after combing the Internet, bugging our local western wear store incessantly, and wondering why cowgirls all have such narrow feet, I found a pair of cowboy boots that fit.

Yes, I said cowboy. Not cowgirl. A girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. It’s still got cow in the title, right? And my Fashion Stylist (aka my sister Leah) said the stitching was ‘purty’ enough.

Making progress now! Phase two complete!

But I needed some more ‘purty.’ After all, I’ve got a man’s hat and men’s boots. Time for Phase Three: Accessories.

Phase Three, I love you. And our love affair will continue . . . Oops. I digress.

First, a hatband:

Christmas present from my Gram. Thanks, Gram!

Then, the belt.

Christmas present from my mom and dad. Thanks, guys!

Jeans? Check.

Christmas present from my dogs. I’d thank them if they would understand it.

Hell, I wear jeans all the time anyway. And these even had ‘bootcut’ in the description. Yes, I know. They aren’t Wrangler. They are a Mall Brand. But I got news for you. I’m, ahem, a whole lot of woman to love, being slightly taller and, um, wider than the average woman. I had to go with best fit, okay? These came in tall. And trust me, men’s jeans would NOT work in this situation.

Add in a nice top with some pin tucking (look it up!), and now we’re cooking.

Another gift from my folks. They’re wonderful folks.

I’ll admit, the top is plain. Some of the shirts I covet at my local western wear store are, um, bold. Flashy, even. It appears Real Cowgirls all have love affairs with Phase Three. I’m taking this one step at a time. All in due time, Rhinestones. All in due time.

And finally, necklaces.

Necklace picked out by my Fashion Stylist. Earrings, get this, Actually Picked Out By ME.

Real Cowgirl Transformation: Complete!

So, tune in next week, when I will have planned far enough ahead to actually put the whole outfit together AND have my husband take a picture of it for me BEFORE he leaves for work on blogging day.

After all, even a Real Cowgirl knows the value of a little tease.

Now. Anybody got a horse I can borrow?

This is Jake, the Three-Legged Wonder Wiener.

Jake is a very thankful dog. As detailed in his story, he’s survived abandonment, a car accident, the mean streets, amputation, a kill shelter, and major back surgery. He never really forgets any of this, as evidenced by his behavior when he thinks we’re going to leave him.

Jake is thankful for things like this:

‘His’ chair, which he graciously deigns to share with me and Gater, as long as Jake has dibs on the lap. Also, his blankie, which, despite his best efforts, still somewhat exists after six years.

His food bowl, and its regular employment.

This is Gater, the four-legged whatever he is.

Gater has had an easier life, compared to Jake. He spent his first year chained outdoors, but he got regular food. He was surrendered to the Humane Society, so he was never faced with making the long walk. As a result of this, he’s not quite as thankful.

He does appreciate the chair, though.

He recently graduated to spending the night snuggled in the chair with Jake, instead of having to sleep in the crate. He still has to stay in the crate during the day, though.

He’s also thankful for food bowls, and the food in them.

And the toys. He’s a big fan.

However, that’s all about to change. You see, today is Thursday. Thanksgiving. Jake is more thankful for this day than any other day of the year. That’s because he knows what’s coming.

Oh, yeah. Thanksgiving is the Most Wonderful Wiener Dog Day of the Year. Jake waits 364 days for this one day and all of its turkey goodness. It doesn’t hurt that Thanksgiving is at my folks’ house, where it’s rumored that my mother is a soft touch when it comes to dogs and table scraps.

Gater has no idea. He’s never seen one of those huge roasted birds before. He’s never nibbled at dark meat so delectable, it fell off the bone. He’s never known the joy of the full-bore capacity of my dad’s cooking skills.

Oh, yeah. That’s the good stuff.

But he will.

And I’d bet all the tea in China that he will be thankful.

As am I.