OkcPets Magazine May 2023

May / June 2023 • OKC Pets 17 J im, my partner in life and dog obsession, handed me his phone the moment I walked in the door from work. “Look,” he said with a smile, “I had a helper today.” The phone screen revealed a series of dog photos, up close and personal — a snout I immediately recognized as belonging to our young dog, Tag. Now, these photos would have had zero meaning for anyone else beyond being funny doggy snoot shots. But I was immediately transported back nearly 16 years earlier. I had walked into the kitchen to find Jim lying on the floor, half inside the cabinet under our kitchen sink doing a little work on the plumbing. Four-month-old Howie had dutifully planted himself on Jim’s chest to “help” with the repairs as only a puppy can. And today, here was Tag repeating the same silly stunt. We might have laughed it off as a random coincidence, but we both knew there was nothing random about it. Canine Magic To understand what I can only describe as a feat of canine magic, we have to turn the calendar back to January of 2022. My heart-and-soul dog, Howie, was on course to see his sixteenth birthday. Although he had always been a healthy dog, his advanced years were finally catching up with him. I knew we were facing his final birthday celebration. I think he knew it too. Tag was part of a litter of puppies we had been fostering for our rescue, the Dalma- tian Assistance League. Our little spotted charges were now old enough to start head- ing off to permanent homes, but Tag, at the height of puppy cuteness and energy, had somehow yet to find a new family. As with all our foster dogs, Tag was treated as part of our family. He was free to roam the house and yard, free to play with our other dogs, free to avoid our grumpier dogs. Howie generally fell in that latter category. Well, grumpy isn’t a fair adjective. Howie just never had any use or affection for puppies. He was a dignified, stoic dog who was more devoted to his humans than to the frivolity of playing with the other dogs. He was the boss dog of the canine clan, the supervisor instead of a participant. But that all changed with Tag. As Tag gained freedom from his puppy playpen, he seemed to consistently gravitate to Howie. Howie, historically the one to meet puppy attention with a toothy warning, chose to tol- erate attention from this spotted youngster. Tag (left) and Howie become a canine team.