Growing up, from one of my first memories to high school and college, we had a dog. Not the same one, but four different dogs, all
Chows. For a very brief time, on two separate occasions, we had two other breeds, a German Shepherd puppy mix and a
Samoyed, but neither stayed with us for very long for different reasons. The former had a tendency to bite me and I remember always trying to get away from him. It's not that he was aggressive – he was just playing as puppies do, being really excitable, and because of his size, he was too overwhelming for me. I think he ended up going back to the family whose dog had whelped him. The latter, named Sabrina, came to us through an ad in the newspaper. The original owner had too many pets (or something) and she was looking to place the dog with another family. I remember S really liked playing with the sprinklers whenever we set them out to water the lawn. She'd put her face right up to the sprayer and try to drink out of it, but it seems mostly she liked being wet. One day she up and ran away, and after some searching, the original owner called to say that the dog had come back to her. I guess her came to some sort of agreement because she didn't come back to our house after that.
Anyway our first chow was named Yuan-Yuan, which roughly means "rolly polly" in Chinese. I imagine we grew up together because my parents once told me that we had acquired her as a puppy from the pet store – but there aren't any pictures of us from back then, and I can only remember the later years. As any young kid, I probably didn't treat her as nicely as I should have. I don't ever remember pulling her ears or tail, but I do remember trying to ride her like a horse when I was probably entirely too heavy. She was a very good natured dog though and usually just kind of put up with me without making a big deal out of it.
Yuan-Yuan was with us for many years, I think until she was about 12 or 13 years old. (I don't know how many dog years that is.) Health wise, she always seemed pretty well to me except for some obvious arthritis in laying down and getting up, climbing stairs. Late in her tenure (year?), we acquired another puppy from the pet store, whom we named Shiao-Shong, or Bear (below, left). The two of them got along, no real territorial issues. I think maybe because Yuan-Yuan was so much older and "established" that the hierarchy was just accepted.
As with some dogs, when the garage door went up, you had to make sure the door to the backyard was closed or else Yuan-Yuan'd make a run for it. Sometimes she liked to do a Houdini from the yard and wander the neighborhood for fun. Occasionally, we'd come home in the afternoon to an empty yard. One day, as with Sabrina, Yuan-Yuan ran away from home, but in Yuan-Yuan's case we never found her. We scoured the neighborhood in our car for at least a month; we called the Humane Society probably weekly; and my mom followed up every tip that we got about someone seeing a chow on such-and-such a street. It didn't help that there was another well-known chow living a few miles from us. In the end, we decided that maybe she had rather die alone and had gone somewhere else to do so.
Anyway our first chow was named Yuan-Yuan, which roughly means "rolly polly" in Chinese. I imagine we grew up together because my parents once told me that we had acquired her as a puppy from the pet store – but there aren't any pictures of us from back then, and I can only remember the later years. As any young kid, I probably didn't treat her as nicely as I should have. I don't ever remember pulling her ears or tail, but I do remember trying to ride her like a horse when I was probably entirely too heavy. She was a very good natured dog though and usually just kind of put up with me without making a big deal out of it.
Yuan-Yuan was with us for many years, I think until she was about 12 or 13 years old. (I don't know how many dog years that is.) Health wise, she always seemed pretty well to me except for some obvious arthritis in laying down and getting up, climbing stairs. Late in her tenure (year?), we acquired another puppy from the pet store, whom we named Shiao-Shong, or Bear (below, left). The two of them got along, no real territorial issues. I think maybe because Yuan-Yuan was so much older and "established" that the hierarchy was just accepted.
As with some dogs, when the garage door went up, you had to make sure the door to the backyard was closed or else Yuan-Yuan'd make a run for it. Sometimes she liked to do a Houdini from the yard and wander the neighborhood for fun. Occasionally, we'd come home in the afternoon to an empty yard. One day, as with Sabrina, Yuan-Yuan ran away from home, but in Yuan-Yuan's case we never found her. We scoured the neighborhood in our car for at least a month; we called the Humane Society probably weekly; and my mom followed up every tip that we got about someone seeing a chow on such-and-such a street. It didn't help that there was another well-known chow living a few miles from us. In the end, we decided that maybe she had rather die alone and had gone somewhere else to do so.
