Rosie
was our family’s Brittany spaniel. She passed away due to a previously unknown
heart condition. We got her when she was still a puppy. Ironically, we got her about a week after my brother Matt moved out, and she died a few days before he moved back in. When we first got Rosie, we had another Brittany named
Cheetah. Cheetah passed away less than a year after we got Rosie, but they did
get to have one bird hunting trip together. Rosie was able to watch Cheetah in
action and learn some hunting skills from her. This started a lifelong passion for
Rosie. She may have enjoyed hunting birds even more than Cheetah did, which is
really saying something.
Rosie
had surprisingly long legs for a Brittany. This made her an extremely fast
runner, and she loved to run. She even
ran in the house, which made her wipe out when turning corners. Whenever my dad
took her hunting, she would zigzag in front of him, running about ten miles for
every mile he walked. If we let her out back into our family’s orchard, she’d
be on the other side of the orchard within seconds. With how fast she was, we
sometimes thought she should
have been named Cheetah. Her athleticism and speed not only made her a great
bird dog; it made her a great escape artist. There were several times when she
scrambled over the back gate and got out, even after we raised its height.
My
dad often called Rosie a “Will Rogers dog” because she never met a man she didn’t
like. She was never the type of dog that growled or barked at people. Any time
she met someone, she wanted to be their best friend. She was like the dog Dug
from the movie Up, who said, “I have
just met you, and I love you!” Instead of licking people, she would nuzzle up
to them. Truth be told, she was quite the little attention hog. Often times,
she would poke her nose under our arms as if to say, “Come on! Pet me!” This
made us roll our eyes whenever we were in the middle of something. Of course, I
was always happy to absentmindedly pet her with one hand while focusing on
something else.
Rosie
had lots of little quirks that made her endearing. She would howl whenever the
phones rang or whenever the oil refinery turned on their sirens for the Friday
drills. We called her a “thunder wuss” because thunder scared her and made her
run upstairs. Like any other dog, she was obsessed with food, but there was
something oddly manipulative about the way she’d look at us when we ate. Also
like other dogs, she loved to chase cats. She was fast enough that she could
have caught them, but she mostly just liked scaring them. When she slept, she
often made funny noises when she was dreaming. There were so many little things
about Rosie that we miss and will always remember.
