Dogs of My Life – Callie

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This series is in honor of the latest addition to my canine history, Sydney, a Shetland Sheepdog or Sheltie pup that joined our family on October 17th, 2015.  I thought it would be neat for me and hopefully you to see and read about all the dogs in my life that proceeded Sydney.

It is interesting how the interval between significant events can escape you. Specifically I cannot enumerate the amount of time between losing Louie, the Lemon Beagle and bringing in Callie, the chocolate Labrador Retriever. I am confident enough to say the photo above with the date stamp is the evening we brought Callie home. We have a friend that breeds Labradors, so we knew we had a reliable source for the next addition to our family.

This new canine addition came during the height of our greenhouse adventure, so we wanted to choose a name with a flower flair. We settled on Callie after the Calla Lily. I like the name so much I have adopted it as the name of a signature character in my thriller novel series.

Callie was a funny dog. In the first picture above you can see a Frisbee that Burger King offered as a tie in to one of the Superman movies. She would chase that thing as many times a I would throw it and crash over, through and under any obstacle during the chase.

Within our time of having Callie we decided to breed her with another chocolate lab that belonged to a family friend. That was a fun time during the summer of 2007, when we had ten dogs on the property at one time. If you want to read about that check back on this blog for the re-posts of A Chocolate Lab Summer – Part One (Callie & Moe) and A Chocolate Lab Summer Part Two – The Puppies Are Coming! The Puppies Are Coming!

During this adventure we had nine puppies, eight chocolates and one cream color. About half went to friends or acquaintances, so I still check on them occasionally. Unfortunately we tried again to breed and just before the second litter Callie died un-expectantly. It was one of the saddest experiences of my pet life, knowing we lost not only our mother dog but potentially many others.

With this experience we realized that dog breeding was something left to others with stronger stomachs and more knowledge.

To read the other posts in this series you can click on the names here: Snoopy, Puff, Master , Sparky, Jack and Louie.