OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2016
AN ODE TO ‘AN
UNFAILINGLY GOOD DOG’
Lacey Hoyer/The Daily Astorian
Una takes protecting the garden (and all its delicious food) very seriously.
By LACEY HOYER
The Daily Astorian
t’s summer, fi nally. The days are
long, the nights are warm and the
fl owers are blooming.
I
I always spend a lot of time during this
season watering the garden and Una, my
13-year-old border collie/blue heeler mix,
likes to be there by my side.
I’d like to say it’s purely because she
loves me, but I know she has an ulterior
motive. What Una’s really after is fresh
food. She will stealthily nose among the
sugar snap peas searching for plump pods
to clip between her teeth and eat. She does
the same thing with tomatoes, strawber-
ries, apples and blackberries. She only takes
the ripe ones, and she only does
it when she thinks I’m not look-
ing. This isn’t the fi rst summer
I’ve gardened with Una by my
side, however. I know exactly
what she’s up, and used to chase
her away with stern admonitions.
But this summer, more and more,
I fi nd myself pretending not to
notice.
She has, after all, spent the last
nine years being an unfailingly
Lacey
good dog.
Hoyer
We got Una when she was
already 4 years old. We were living in Rose-
burg at the time with four cats and a ram-
bunctious puppy, and we hadn’t wanted
or needed another pet. I don’t know what
brought us to the animal shelter that day in
late September, but for whatever reason we
found ourselves walking down the long row
of chain-link and cement-block cages and
frantically barking Chihuahuas, pit bulls and
lab mixes.
She was sitting politely by the door of
the very last cage, silent while the other dogs
were loudly trying to get my attention. As
soon as I laid eyes on her, the hairs on my
arms stood up and I heard a voice screaming
in my head, “That is your dog! Get her out
of that cage and bring her home!” I crouched
down and stuck my fi ngers through the
fence, and her tail thumped softly while she
smelled me. She raised her bright, keen eyes
to mine and gently licked me.
Without speaking, my husband and I
both knew our family wouldn’t be com-
plete without her. She knew sit, and stay, and
heel — she was the most well-mannered
and beautiful dog we’d ever seen. As we
fi lled out the paperwork to take her home,
we asked the attendants why no one had
adopted her yet. They didn’t know. All they
Photo Courtesy of Robin Loznak
Una
In her heart
she is a bold,
courageous and
dutiful dog.
W riter’s
N otebook
did know was that she’d been in the shelter
a month already, picked up without a collar
along a road dotted by farms and ranches,
and was slated to be euthanized in the next
day or two. We surmised she must have been
waiting just for us, and all three smiled with
relief at such a close call as we headed out
the doors to home.
Una’s fi rst offi cial act as our dog was to
appoint herself the protector of the family.
This has meant, through the years, mostly
chasing neighbor cats out of the yard and
barking ferociously at the UPS man.
I know, however, that in her heart she is
a bold, courageous and dutiful dog, and that
she would not hesitate to protect us from an
actual threat. Just a few months ago, Avery,
my oldest daughter, went to help a neigh-
bor wash his car while I watched from my
porch. Una didn’t know the man, and she
was not comfortable with him and Avery
being so close together without me there.
She fl ew down the street and positioned
herself between them — eyes fl ashing and
snarling menacingly at our poor neighbor —
and herded Avery home.
Despite being a good dog, Una isn’t
always a perfect dog. She is sometimes dis-
tant and proud.
We refer to her our “schoolmarm”
because she cannot abide it when people or
other animals have too much noisy fun. She
has garnered a reputation as a connoisseur of
kitty litter and dirty diapers. More than once
in our many years with her, she has come
home from an adventure in the woods caked
in mud and swamp sludge, and reeking of
something long dead.
She is most affectionate after killing and
eating rodents and snakes — she’ll climb
onto our laps, look deep into our eyes and
attempt to French kiss us. And of course she
has that sly propensity to pluck and eat the
ripe vegetables in the garden before I’ve had
a chance to.
I’ve been mad at her more times than I
can count, but there have been many more
times when I felt like she was the only real
friend I had in the world.
When I was a new mother and suffer-
ing from post partum depression, she would
sympathetically lick the tears rolling down
my cheeks while I cried into her fur in the
early hours of the morning. She’s listened
patiently as I’ve told her my dreams, my
grievances, my fears. Like all good dogs,
she never judges.
Sometimes, after rooting in the litter box
or barking excessively for no good reason, I
remind her how lucky she is that I decided to
go to the shelter that day so many years ago.
I say it, even though I know for a fact that
I’m the real lucky one.
This is Una’s 13th summer, and most
likely her last good one. Despite the warm
temperatures, her arthritis has begun fl aring
up. She is stiff and her joints creak alarmingly
when she gets up from the fl oor. Opaque
clouds are blooming in her eyes and the black
spots on her muzzle and ears have suddenly
started turning gr ay. She doesn’t go on long
expeditions in the forest anymore, preferring
to nap in a sunny spot close by the house.
These days, while picking peas or any
of the other fruit Una likes, I always make
sure to drop a handful on the ground for her
to fi nd. She gobbles them up with gladness,
and I am happy to give them. I know that
summer and its fruit, like the life of a good
dog, won’t last long.
Or at least not nearly long enough.
Lacey Hoyer manages to squeeze in time
working at Clatsop Community College
and The Daily Astorian in between parent-
ing her two spunky children. A graduate of
the University of Oregon, she lives in Ham-
mond. You can read more about Hoyer and
Una’s adventures on her website at www.
sproutandsprig.com
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher • LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
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