Mamie and Coki

When I was in Houston at a signing event for Golden Beginnings Rescue, Debbie e-mailed me to say that the East Valley shelter in the San Fernando Valley had called to tell her that there was a ten-year-old golden scheduled to be put down that afternoon. She was letting me know that she was heading over there to rescue it.

I knew exactly what this meant; Debbie shops in animal shelters the way most people shop in malls. She points and says, “I want that one, and that one, and that one…”

She got four dogs that day. The golden, which she named Mamie; Wanda, the mastiff; Luke, a black Lab mix; and Coki, a border collie mix. Luke died well before we made the trip to Maine, but Coki and Mamie joined Wanda on the RVs.

I don’t think Mamie is a purebred golden—there’s probably a little chow in her—but she’s close. She hangs out at the top of the steps in the Maine house, sleeping on the landing, and it gives her a view out onto her world. Except for Sara the beagle, Mamie is probably the most demanding dog we have; she wants to eat on her schedule and will not accept any excuses.

She also demands her own water dish, and would rather die of thirst than drink from the other water dishes, the ones the peasants use.

Coki is scraggly looking but adorable, with a smile on her face twenty-four hours a day. She is completely unintimidated by her housemates, even though most of them outweigh her by anywhere from thirty to a hundred pounds.

I left my closet door open one day, and Coki curled up in there. It remained her base of operations until about three months after our arrival in Maine. She took ill one morning, and the vet discovered an inoperable tumor on her liver, which ended her life.

Mamie and Wanda are therefore sadly the lone remaining witnesses to Debbie’s shopping spree.