We got her on Memorial Day weekend, 1989. I remember driving on a Friday evening from Denver to Leadville to get her. Here are rough directions from Denver to Leadville. Head west out of Denver. When you get to the mountains drive for about 2 hours. Turn left and drive for 2 more hours. By the time we got there and bought Miss Jones it was too late to go back, so we stayed in a hotel in Leadville. Jones was just a puppy and whined all night long. When we tried to leave the next morning, the car over-heated. Memorial Day Weekend, almost nothing is open and we are stuck in Leadville. By the biggest piece of dumb luck I've ever had, the first gas station we found open had the part we needed. We did n't know what to name her until a good friend told us he always wanted a dog and wanted to name her, "Miss Jones." We loved it and stole the idea for ourselves. We called her Miss Jones, Jones, Jonesy, MJ and sometimes, That Dog or That Horrible Animal.
People ask what kind of dog we have. I say, "She's possessed by the devil." She's actually a yellow lab, but her personality is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We used to live in a house that had a long, but narrow back yard. The long part was bordered by a 4 foot high white picket fence. It must have run 35-40 feet in length. And this was a well traveled street. Many kids would walk by our house on their ways to and from school. Until Jones came along. She would sit on a porch away from the fence and wait. She'd wait until someone was about half-way between the ends of the yard and then attack. She'd run as fast as she could toward the person on the other side of the fence, jump up on the fence, bare her teeth and bark like a maniac. The pedestrian would run away, petrified. I'm convinced Jonesy did it for fun.
When we moved we had to drive two cars across the country. The Mrs. was in one car with MJ, and I followed. When we got to toll booths, Jones would stand up in the back seat as the car slowed down. I could see her tail wagging back and forth vigorously. She'd put her head behind the drivers seat and wait for the window to be rolled down. As soon as the toll booth collector reached out for the money, Jones would lunge her head through the window and begin barking like she wanted to kill. Many a toll booth collector dropped the money. I watched all of this and would say to myself, "That horrible animal is doing it for fun."
And she stole food. We learned fairly quickly that if groceries were being brought in, you had to put Jones in another room because she would take it while you were unpacking the food. Once, she stole a very nice loaf of bread we had bought for a dinner we were preparing for company. Another time, we didn't see her taking the food, rather, we noticed some food was gone and the paw prints were on the counter. One Easter I hid eggs all around the house. When I woke up the next moring, all of the eggs were gone. Jones had eaten all of them (about 2 dozen) and was sick, all over the house. So I had to clean up her mess then rush to a store and buy plastic easter eggs for the kids. We had a party for my mother's birthday and Jones went around stealing hot dogs-from children's hands. I'm sure she was thinking, "Like stealing candy from a baby."
She hated everyone and everything. She never reconciled herself to having neighbors. She could know someone for years and still treat them like an intruder when they arrived at our house. We have had a cat for five years now and thought Jones would one day learn to live with it. Wrong. Jones hated the cat when we got it and hates the cat now. We have to keep them separate.
Before our first child was born, we were reading in a book that dogs can become jealous of kids and one way to prepare the dog is to get a doll, wrap it up in the baby clothes you will use for the baby and walk around the house so the dog can get used to another creature around. We did this. We were sitting on the couch with this doll and Jones walks up. "Look Jones, a baby." She grabs the doll's head between her teeth and starts running around the room, shaking the doll around in her mouth. We were a little bit concerned.
But when K1 was born, Jones acted like a mother. When K1 cried, Jones would run to us and then to K1-like in a Lassie movie, "Hey, the kid's crying." And she would lick K1 when she was crying. And when K1 was old enough to crawl and walk, she would go over to Jones and pull her tail, and ears and poke her in the eye and Jones would sit there, wag her tail and lick K1. MJ has acted the exact same way with the other two kids. It is obvious she loves the kids.
She loves all of us. When I come home, she acts like I've been gone for years. When we've had to board her when we go on vacation and she is petrified to leave us. So even though she is evil, she is completely devoted to us, has never harmed us or made us feel like she would harm us and is very loving towards us and the kids.
She was fun, always in an odd way. She loved snow. She would run through it, biting the snow on the ground and biting it as it fell from the sky. She loved water from the hose. She would raise herself up on her rear legs and bite at the stream of water as it came rushing out of the hose. She was full of energry and vigor and life.
Recently MJ had been slowing down. She had been going blind. She lost control of her bodily functions. She had a tremendous amount of difficulty getting up and started to hurt herself. For instance, one night I was taking her downstairs for the night (she likes to sleep in the basement because it is cool) and she lost control of her legs and fell the last few stairs, hitting her head on the dresser at the bottom of the stairs. When I came home, she didn't leap up anymore, thrilled to see me. It became difficult and painful for her to walk. I'm also fairly convinced she had cancer since she has been losing a lot of weight.
I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to go through with it. I kept waiting for someone to say, "Not now. Let's wait." I kept praying for someone to say that. I came home early from work on the 11th. The Mrs. had taken pictures of Jones with the kids in the back yard. She prepared the wagon to take her. Lately we had to back the wagon up to the stairs leading from the back-yard and place boards on the stairs into the wagon since Jones was unable to jump from the ground into the car.
I left my cell phone on. Please someone call me and say don't do it. But we all knew it was time.
We miss our Miss Jones. She was a very good friend. She was part of our family. We miss her.