[Henry Schmidt]

I hate reading about so much loss but I appreciate the outpouring of love surrounding these beloved companions.

A few years ago I wrote the story of Cleopatra and posted it here.
This seems like a great time to post it again.

A funny place this universe of ours.
A year and a half ago I bought my wife an English Cream Golden Retriever for Christmas. I’ve always had dogs but generally smaller dogs. I totally understand the large dog attraction now. He is a rock star.
When we picked up Baxter, I wanted a female and Judy wanted a male. It was her present, so she won.
After reading information about spay and neutering dogs, we made the informed decision to let Baxter mature before we did the procedure.
We have an older dog, “Shadow” with severe arthritis that is hanging in (chiropractic is helpful) but I’m guessing not that much longer. After a few months of Baxter exposure, I thought it might be cool to breed him and keep a female pup.
With that in mind, I started looking for a suitable female. During my search, I stumbled on to a Golden rescue website and thought just rescuing a pup might be a better solution.
The website I found had the perfect dog (I thought). It was an eight month old Great Pyrenees female.
I filled out the paper work and waited for a response. Much to my surprise, the response was; “NO. We appreciate your application but you have been deemed an irresponsible pet owner.
This decision was based on the fact that your dog is not neutered”. Wow! This rescue facility has deemed all pet owners with viable pets to be “irresponsible”. No show animal owners need apply.
I seriously thought about sending a nasty email (my usual MO) because I was angry about the rejection and the accusation of “irresponsibility” but in this case I just let it go.
A few months later, I’m wandering the property and spotted Baxter on the loose. I called him and he ran away. What the heck? I returned to the shop and found Baxter resting in my office.
A few days later, it happened again. It’s not like Baxter to ignore me.
The next time it happened I realized that the dog I was seeing was not Baxter. The dog kept hanging around so I took a few pictures and realized that what we had here was a young (8-9 month old) Great Pyrenees.
I posted a few pictures around town to try and locate the owner, no luck. We tried catching the dog with the same result, no luck. My wife can’t help but care for “needy” animals so she started to feed the dog.
In exchange, she started bring us presents from around the neighborhood. She brought mostly toys, shoes and the like. This “stealing” behavior lead Judy to name her Kleptomaniac, Cleo for short. During the next 3 months, we had occasion to catch her but she was so distressed about her captivity that we just let her go (or perhaps she escaped). She was like feeding a feral cat, she felt like ours but not really. A couple of weeks ago, she started bringing us “food” (first a seagull wing and then a rodent). Some suggested that she was trying to join our pack. We started leaving Baxter out on the patio on a tether so that they could play without her taking Baxter away. Like any young male, Baxter is easily distracted by female allure. We would let Shadow, our little Corgi mix out as well and everyone seemed to be getting along perfectly.
Well, a week or so ago, everyone was on the patio playing. Judy decided it was time to eat and when she let Baxter and Shadow in, Cleo followed. She’s had a bath, found a comfortable spot and she seemed to feel at home. She has been in and out regularly (house breaking is fun…. not) but at times it really seems like she would rather be in than out.
She is such a sweet dog that Klepto seemed inappropriate so Cleo became Cleopatra.
I’m writing this story because I wanted to share this experience with people who feel angry because they didn’t get something they wanted. It’s easy to internalize disappointment but sometimes you just have to wait until the universe is ready. I/we wanted that rescue dog and yet what we thought was rejection was really just timing. We were meant to have a space for Cleopatra and that’s how things worked out. To quote the Stones: You can't always get what you want, But if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need.
Thanks for reading ………………… Henry

Cleopatra has been with us, all be it, free ranging ever since.