nce upon a time there were two humans, Deborah and Bill. They had
been married for a long time and had raised two, two-footed creatures.
Those creatures eventually grew up and moved away. Deborah and Bill said "Whoopee! Now
we have time to be by ourselves!" They enjoyed that for a while, but then Bill wanted to get a
dog (they had had dogs a number of years ago, but that's another story). Deborah wasn't so sure
about this getting a dog business. Bill said that he respected her feelings and would never try to
pressure her in any way. But strangely enough, almost every time he went to the video place he
brought home dog movies for the two of them to watch. Then dog books began arriving in the
satchel from the library.
Deborah (not being too dense) began to figure out that Bill was in serious need of a dog. Also,
she was beginning to get a bit lonesome for someone to cuddle (besides Bill that is!). And so,
she said Bill could make his best case for the kind of dog he wanted to get. Since they had had a
very bad time once with a dog who had an unstable, nasty temperment, Bill didn't want to blow
it. He talked to lots of people and the vet (who is a person, too, by the way), and he read up a
lot, and said, "What would be good for us now is a Golden Retriever." After talking about it a
lot and spending time with some Goldens, they eventually found a five month old puppy who
they named Becka.
Now Becka turned out to be the prototypical Golden Retriever. She was
very friendly, liked everybody indiscriminately, and lived to eat. Since
Deborah and Bill had read How to be Your Dog's Best Friend by the
Monks of New Skete, they spent as much time with Becka as they could,
and Bill even took her to the office with him when he did psychotherapy.
He kept telling Deborah how nice it was to have a dog with him at work,
and how Becka was a help in working with patients. Well, that began to
sound kinda good to Deborah, who by that time was also doing
psychotherapy. Right about then, Deborah discovered some books written by Andrew Greeley.
She liked them a lot because they were great stories, and had a lot about the Irish in them, which
is about half of her heritage (and about all of her temperment!).
So one day, there Deborah was, minding her own business, reading a Greeley book called The
Cardinal Virtues, when BAMMMM! All of a sudden Greeley introduces a new character called
Norah, an Irish Wolfhound. Well, Deborah knew a little about Irish Wolfhounds, and had been
thinking about what kind of big dog she might want to get, but oh dear, by the end of the book
she was smitten! But she calmed herself down by telling herself that she needed to find out a
whole lot more about them and besides which, Bill probably wouldn't like them anyway. Well
then, Bill read the Greeley book, took one look at Deborah when she talked wistfully about
"Perhaps we could find some Wolfhound somewhere to visit," and knew he had to do
something.
And so again, Bill and Deborah talked to people, read books and consulted with the vet. The vet
was able to give them the names of two people she knew in the area who had Wolfhounds at that
time. Bill and Deborah first went to visit the woman (whose name was Harriette) who had just
one Wolfhound. Deborah walked into her living room, took one look at the Large, Hairy Beast,
and WHAMMMM! her heart was captured! Harriette laughed a lot at Deborah, especially after
about half an hour or so when Deborah realized she hadn't even paid any attention to the
woman. Harriette then said she'd take Deborah and Bill and her Wolfhound Maggie over to see
a friend of hers who had three Wolfhounds. Deborah and Bill spent a terrific afternoon getting
their faces licked, getting sat on by a 165 pound dog, and watching Wolfhounds playfight.
Now Deborah and Bill were in real trouble, as they had been
bitten/smitten by the Irish Wolfhound bug BIG TIME. It took them a
number of months to find a breeder, but they eventually were selected by
Fionna to be her human parents. Fionna turned out to be a gentle,
luminous, creature, who went just about everywhere with Deborah.
Deborah took her to the office, and they learned to do psychotherapy
together. But Fionna seemed to have a problem in that she regurgitated
food and vomitted a lot more than normal. It turned out that Fionna had a megaesophagus and
would need special care in order to survive. Deborah and Bill figured out lots of ways to help
her out, like building a special feeding stand, and elevating her beds, etc.
A few years later, Deborah began having puppy
longings again. She told Bill that since the
upcoming Christmas was going to be their first
one without either of their two-footed children,
she wanted to make it special in a different way,
like (surprise!) getting a Wolfhound puppy. And
so, Tulia found her way into their house and
hearts. That was all very nice, except Deborah found out that she couldn't let either Fionna or
Tulia go to spend time in Bill's office at work, and he was getting major Wolfhound withdrawals
during the day. Deborah and Bill weren't sure whether they were ready for the middle of the
night trips outside again so soon, so they decided to wait a few months. Lucky they did, because
a littermate of Tulia's named Keegan needed to find a new home, and guess where he picked?!
Next, Deborah (will this woman never settle down?) started talking about
how she wanted to be around Wolfhound puppies as they were being
whelped and when they were very little. She spent time at the breeders
getting to know the Mama in waiting, and one cold night in January,
went racing down there to help out in the whelping. Because it was an
hour and a half from where Deborah and Bill lived, several puppies had
already been born by the time she got there, including the number one
puppy, a red female. As Deborah spent one day each week with the
puppies, it soon became very clear who had picked Deborah out to be her human Mom: the
lovely, the snorky, the assertive, the first out of the whelping box, the remarkable Carina!!
And so, that's how Deborah and Bill and Becka and Fionna and Tulia and Keegan and Carina
came to love and live and work together in a place called The Hounds of Heaven.