THE REAL BOSS IN THE HOUSE

By Edie Holdgrafer
Copyright 2001

The real Boss of the house

This boss that I am starting out with was the smartest, gentle most, caring, protective overseer of the household, upholding a secure environment at all times; sometimes putting her own safety out in front to protect anyone and everything within the radius of the whole property where we lived. As you can tell by my saying .her, it was a female. She was two-toned brown, smart, and loving and the best, darned dog there ever was.

There is not enough good that can be said about her. Many incidents happened in the years we had her in our family and many times she did fantastic things, not only saving us from burglars, but, entertaining us for hours and making us enjoy our lives even more.

We had a house in Pomona, when we first got her, and it only took a few weeks to have her completely house broken. We made her a house dog; for it was safer to have her inside the house than outside . We all worked together on how she was to be trained; and all followed all the instructions given by the book perfectly and this female dog was trained with hand commands as well as spoken commands and did not bark unless instructed to do so; by us telling her to speak. She was an Australian Shepherd and very intelligent and we named her Lady.

Lady protected the property and she would be so happy to see the kids when they arrived home from school, and she would protect them all the hours I had to be away from home to pick up Dad from work. He worked in Los Angeles in the heart of the factory district. I knew the kids were all safe with her on guard. We took her on outings with us to the beach, or fishing or just walking in the hills looking for snakes, rocks, anything we would be interested in. the boys had all kinds of wild spiders and snakes and we even had a little sparrow, who fell out of the nest and we picked it up, took it in the house and proceeded to feed it oatmeal and other stuff from a dropper and put her in a bird cage. Who would have believed a sparrow would make such a cool pet, but the boys had fun getting her to kiss them, hop on their fingers, get on their shoulders etc. lady watched after her and never attempted to hurt her or any of the other bugs, snakes etc. she fit in perfectly.
One night, I was asleep and Lady came to nip at my arm to wake me up, having heard something outside. She saw I was getting up and putting on my robe and went running into the dining room and I heard her growling and quite a noise from some man who was halfway in the window when Lady grabbed his ankle and really bit hard. As I came into the room , the man had pulled his foot loose and was gone. I could hear him scrambling. Course the only thing he left was a little blood on the dining room floor by the window and up the wall to the window where he left it, screen down and window up. Then I sent Lady out into the yard to make sure he was gone for good. When all was quiet and she came back in I stepped out into the front yard with her and she went sniffing around and it was apparently safe for she came back wagging her tail and I took her in and gave her a treat and said what a good dog she was.

About that time a divorce of us two parents occurred and I went to work at the Ontario 500 truck stop in Ontario.

We moved soon after that to Pedley, just out of Ontario, where I worked at the truck stop, because the landlord wanted to sell that house we had rented from him for 10 years. We all were not that happy in that new move to that house but we made it do and Lady kept us safe there and it was close to my work. The boys did not like the school they now had to go to and decided to go live with their Dad for a spell. I kept Lady as the boys would come back and forth for weekends and vacations. I had met and married Jim having fell in love at first sight. We moved into our friend Jim’s house for a short time till we could find just the right spot. We had Lady with us and she protected that property for a short spell, as Jim and I each looked for a place to live. Jim was working at the “Long Horn” Bar in Pedley.
We were only there a short time and found this great little ranch on ten acres, right on a corner in Riverside. I immediately walked the property line and told Lady she was to stay inside it. Jim was a “country man” and knew all about horses and trimming them and shoeing them. We moved in and Lady loved it. We acquired furniture, piece by piece and cleaned up the property by putting up fence all around the back pasture part of the property. There was a little “2 bedroom” house and a second house, which we turned into barracks for the boys when they returned to live with us. We also had a huge building where we kept tools for jobs as my husband did all kinds of handyman jobs. There also was a long chicken coop with both indoor facilities and pens. We went to an auction every Saturday night and bought horses, a pony, chickens, roosters, a guinea hen, rabbits, ducks and the property with all those varmints that Lady just loved. She had the most wonderful time of her life. I never saw such a happy dog, and she showed so much love for all the animals and she had been used to unusual pets, as I mentioned earlier about the snakes, bugs, spiders and birds. My sons made pets of everything. They would put the tarantula spider on the floor and Lady would sit in front of it, wagging her tale and acting anxious but never hurt it in any way. The same thing, with the horses and rabbits. If the baby rabbits fell out of the cage during the day when she was outside, she would come and get us immediately and we would check them out and have to assure her they were ok, and put them into the cage with their mother rabbit. Only then would Lady relax and go about with Zest. She did so much. You never knew what she would do next. She had a bowling ball that she would slap down the lane with her paws and run in about 40 feet and then stop and pick it up between her front teeth and carry it back to the beginning, where she would start slapping it again over and over. People driving by in cars would stop and watch her and if we were in the front yard, they would swing into the driveway to tell us how much they enjoyed watching her on different days doing all the things she did, running with the horses, rolling the bowling ball, doing other things. They were amazed and said so. Word spread all around the neighborhood, for more and more would slow down or stop just to see what she was doing at that moment.

We had barbeques on that property and she loved the smell and would sit and anxiously wait for what smelled so good. Any animal we brought onto the property we would call Lady immediately to say “look what we have Lady!” and she would
come up an smell it and then we would say; “you take care of this girl.” We would pet her and pet the animal and from that moment on, she would protect it, knowing it was ours.

If a dog or any others would come on the property, she would immediately let us know and she would chase it off. She especially loved cats. She would sleep close and sometimes the cat would curl up in between Lady’s, head and chest.

When the horses were being ridden, she would be trotting along the side and wagging her tail and acting like she was one happy dog. Course the kids would do all kinds of things on the horses backs and sometimes get bucked off and Lady would go up to their cheeks and lick them to make sure they were ok. This too attracted people to park alongside the property, just to see the fun of riding and goofing off they were all doing. But if any of us, which my husband and I did quite often, left the property on horseback to take a trip to another friends ranch, she would wine and we would have to tell her to stay and guard the property; and she faithfully always did. We gave her little snacks for a reward. Only one time did she follow us in the pickup out of the yard and over the boundary line she was not supposed to cross. I was driving and hauling a pony in the back, and when I looked and saw in the mirror, Lady running behind us, I quickly pulled to the side of the street and got out. I put her in the cab of the truck and my husband with me, wondered at the time, “WHY?” We delivered the pony to the man, who borrowed it for a birthday party for his son and returned back home and let Lady out. We never did figure out why she did that. She never did it again. I guess it was just one of those mysteries you never can solve. She never did it again, unless we called to her to jump into the truck. We lived there on that ranch for about 2 years, and then once again the property owners, wanted to sell the property for a big apartment complex to be built there. So once again we started looking and found a ranch with only 1 acre of ground in Fontana, but it was a 4 bedroom house and had a den, we turned into another bedroom and when we moved, many people caught us in between moves to tell us they were sure sorry we were moving and when we explained that the landlord was
going to build a large apartment complex there, they sure thought and said to us, there goes the property value of the acreage around there with apartments, came many people and their noises and problems. I bet they still talk of the nice Lazy H Ranch that was there once and the dog who rolled the bowling ball all around. I know my family and I sure hated to move from there.
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The next place we found was a little 1 acre piece with a big 4 bedroom house. It did not take us long to put up a pasture fence and make room for the horses and goats. We let all the rest of the animals go to our other friends and started buying eggs at the local store. Little by little over the next year or so, we hauled horses from the auction and took the mini horses to the horse shows but Jim had taken a trip back to his family in Iowa, and decided it would give us all different opportunities for work. We sold all we couldn’t haul on the trailer, and headed for Iowa. Some of the boys were still in school and we lived there for a year or more with Jim doing odd jobs, and I worked for a truck stop. Lady was happy there and again, people were amazed at how she minded us, not going off the property line, unless we let her. She again played with her bowling ball and people were amused seeing her. We had a cat that had kittens at that time. One day the mama cat was gone and nowhere to be found. Lady took over for the next few days as protector of those kittens and even had them suckling her like she was mama. Suddenly after 2 days, we opened the door to a very mad scared mama cat; who obviously had been locked up in a garage, we found out later, from a neighbor. She came hissing in the door at everyone and having rushed over to her little kittens, finding them ok, settled down and became a happy cat once again. Course she couldn’t get enough to eat or drink for a day or so. Lady relaxed upon her return and went outside to play with her bowling ball once again. Obviously, very proud of herself! I know we were all very proud of her!
This sweet Lady dog continued protecting us as she had a few litters of her own and had the time come that she passed on to dog heaven. We all talk about her from time to time and know we will never forget all the blessing she gave to us all and all the wonderful memories and laughter she left for us in our hearts.
For all of us: She was the best “Boss of the House,” dog there ever was!

THE END