I was in the bathtub enjoying a hot soak, eating Granny Smith Apples and finishing off the second of a six-pack of Guiness. I had just returned from my first “century” – a 100 mile bike ride and that was what I craved. As my aching muscles slowly relaxed in the steamy soup, my wife sat on the closed toilet seat raving about the puppy.

We had gotten our first dog together on a whim nearly a year earlier. He was a Jack Russell we named Jake. Jake didn’t mind being cold, wet or hungry, he just hated being alone. Each day when we returned from work, he demanded the 8 hours of attention that he didn’t get while we were gone. It started to seem like a second job in and of itself.

So we had the bright idea of getting him a buddy, another dog to keep him company thus began a rather quirky quest. Jake’s breeder said she wouldn’t have any puppies available for 6 months so we started contacting other Jack Russell breeders. They all turned out to be kind of weird. They had houses full of bouncy, yappy little dogs and wore homemade t-shirts with “I Heart My JR” captions over pictures of their loved ones. One guy swore to me that his dog could talk although what came out of his hairy progeny’s mouth didn’t sound anything like “I love you” to me. The only things missing were the tinfoil hats and UFO abductions.

With the breeders too strange and their dogs too annoying, we had demurred on the addition to our family. In the midst of our stalemate, Jake’s breeder reached out. A customer had returned a puppy. An elderly couple had purchased a young female, encountered some health problems and could not now give her the attention and exercise the breed demands. My wife had gone to inspect but not purchase the dog since we had agreed it would be a mutual decision and I had been busy that day riding my bike 100 miles. The plan was to go together for another look at the puppy after I finished my soak.

“She’s so cute. I think you’re really going to love her. She came right up to me and sat in my lap immediately. Will you be done soon so we can go see?” I had absolutely no interest in getting out of the tub for at least an hour since I still had a nearly full bag of fruit and four more Guiness to drink. What’s the point of riding so far if you can’t get drunk and eat apples in the tub?

“Why don’t you just go get her?”

“Really? You don’t want to see her first?”

“Nah. I trust your judgement. Go pick her up. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

“I just know you’re going love her.” She said, bouncing to her feet.

“What’s her name, by the way?”

“They named her Meadow.”

“Dumb name.”

“I want to call her Scout after the hero of my favorite novel To Kill a Mockingbird.”

“Great, let’s name her Scout.”

Within an hour we had a new family member. Turns out she was just as cute as my wife had described. And we got a discount since she was already 4 months old.

Scout turned out to be the perfect companion for Jake. She could be just as frisky and they played together for hours but she definitely had her own personality. Jake loved to chase and catch Frisbees but Scout seemed to derive her pleasure from playing defense. I launched it high and long, Jake would zoom out into the field, prance on his hind legs waiting for it to descend and Scout’s method was to bump him just before he leapt so he would miss the catch. This never got boring for either of them.

Jake liked attention but Scout was a rampant lapdog. Call it a stereotype but I like to think she got her softer side because she was female. As long as you were willing to pat, pet or stroke her she would snuggle in your lap for days. Didn’t matter whether you were a stranger or family member. Scout loved you if you even showed a hint of loving her. For as long as you could stand it.

With Becky and I both training for marathons, Jake and Scout got an inordinate amount of exercise. Mornings with me and afternoons with her, an average total of 15 – 20 miles a day but they never complained. No matter what the season or weather conditions all we had to do was pick up the leashes and they would snap to attention. Through pouring rain that turned hiking trails into streams or deep, wet April snow up to their bellies with a frozen crust on the surface so they had to hop like bunnies they never failed to answer the call of the trails.

Where Jake was an impulsive, bounding ball of energy, Scout was more patient and thoughtful and thus a better hunter. She saw opportunities that Jake missed. Once the three of us discovered a mouse in the basement. The dark gray rodent skittered across the concrete floor and Jake the white blur took chase. From one side to the other, zig-zagging around the furnace and water heater the chase went on but Scout sat right at my heel, keenly aware of the scene. After several passes back and forth, the mouse passed in front of her and she pounced in a short, efficient movement, scooped it up in her mouth and bit down. The mouse squeaked and fell out dead at my feet as Scout trotted away. Jake was confused. Hadn’t he done all the hard work? It wasn’t fair that Scout got to do the killing. But she just turned out to be better at it.

When we lived a quarter of a mile away from a country club golf course, that was our spot for morning runs. Cart paths for me and lots of open hills and streams for the dogs. I must confess they occasionally crapped on the greens but hey, don’t they pay people to pick that shit up? Gotta keep’em busy.

It was a particularly early morning of a heavy snowfall and I couldn’t really see the little white dogs in the white fields. Scout stood out more because she had a black patch and I made her out to be grabbing something on the ground and shaking her head. When I got closer I saw it was a rat, writhing in its death throes. She had grabbed it and broken its neck with that shake.

When I arrived home I wiped the dogs’ feet and bellies and they bounded up to jump on our bed and say good morning to my wife by licking her face. I yelled up the stairway, “Becky, don’t let Scout lick your face!”

“Too late, why?”

“She had a rat in her mouth.”

“And you let her lick my face before you told me?”

“But it’s not like it was a filthy alley rat. It was a country club rat. They’re cleaner.” It seemed little consolation.

Not only was Scout a killer, she was an endlessly patient stalker. And a starer of squirrels. After chasing the little tree rats to their arbor refuge she would sit and stare at them for hours as if she was willing the squirrel into her jaws. It took a tug on her collar to get a reaction.

And Scout was an escape artist. Every time she got out of the back yard at our first house, it would take me at least a week to find out how she did it and repair the fence. But every time I repaired, she eventually found another route. When I finally kept her in the yard as she could find no more avenues of escape, we sold the house and moved to another with no fence and acres of woods behind it.

Now Scout has gone on to that great backyard in the sky. She had 17 years of life on this planet filled with snuggles within our home and romping through the woods outside it. Our sons – now 10 & 12 – grew up with Scout and Jake. They never knew a day of their lives without them.

They say that until you have children, your dogs are your kids. And then after you have children, your dogs are just dogs. But that a never happened with Scout. She was always our baby. And now we miss her every day.

She gave us so much to remember her by but I like to think we gave her lots in return. Like not growing up owned by old people with a stupid name like Meadow.

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