Rickover was the first dog my husband and I owned together. I’ve mentioned Rickover before (see here and here), but he has never had a post devoted solely to him. I found a couple of photos recently that made me decide to rectify my oversight.
As I’ve said before, he was half Brittany Spaniel, and the other half unknown (but probably Labrador). We acquired him as a puppy when he was about eight weeks old. Our friend had convinced one of her friends to take Rickover’s mother, not knowing that the Brittany was about to give birth to puppies. When this was discovered, our friend felt guilty and agreed to find homes for the puppies.
The Brittany had eight puppies, all adorable. We were invited to visit the puppies, and we were strongly encouraged to adopt one. We resisted. And resisted. Until there was just one puppy unclaimed. Then we succumbed and took the last one home.
My husband named the dog after Admiral Hyman Rickover, founder of the Navy’s nuclear submarine program. Admiral Rickover had no children, but at least he had one namesake.
We have a sweet picture of Rickover (dog, not admiral) fighting a soccer ball. He was still quite small and could barely straddle it. If I find the picture, I will post it, but it was not readily to be found as I drafted this post.
The friend who gave us Rickover had also adopted a dog that she named Wendell. We took care of each other’s dogs when we went on vacations. Wendell was about a year older than Rickover and was clearly the alpha dog when the two canines were together.
One of Rickover’s proudest moments was when he swam bravely into the Lake of the Ozarks in Southern Missouri to retrieve a stick that Wendell refused to chase. We could see Rickover’s self-esteem swell as he returned to shore and flourished the stick under Wendell’s nose.
When Rickover was about a year old, Wendell’s family was taking care of him while we were out of town. Rickover escaped their fenced yard, ran into the street, and was hit by a car. He broke his pelvis. After a lengthy vet stay, he recovered and lived to be fourteen years old. But he never was able to jump much after his injury—something for which I was grateful.
We didn’t take many pictures of Rickover. He was quickly supplanted in our affections by our first child, born about nine months after we acquired the dog. (You know what they say happens after a couple adopts . . . the couple then frequently has a biological kid. Well, it happened to us.)
So I was glad to find these pictures. If the dog’s eyes look a little wild, it’s because I tried to correct his redeye manually and inexpertly. Rickover really had very pretty brown eyes and never stared crazily.
When we moved into our current house, Rickover was befriended by our next door neighbor, a woman who loved dogs but did not own one. She fed him treats and took him on walks more often than we did. He gained weight because the treats outnumbered the walks. Ultimately, the vet said he should go on a diet, and my husband complied. We put him on low-fat dog food, and Rickover shriveled from 70 pounds to the desired 55 pounds in about six months.
Rickover tried to ignore our children when they came along, but when our son was old enough, he was given the chore of feeding the dog and cleaning up the backyard. Rickover became our son’s best friend for a while, and the two of them had many private chats over the years.
Rickover died in 1995, at age fourteen. The neighbor who loved him called one Sunday morning to say that Rickover was having seizures in the yard. We had suspected he had a brain tumor, because of his behavior.
My husband was out of town that weekend so I woke my 13-year-old son to help me carry the dog up the stairs and through the house to the garage. We loaded Rickover in my minivan, then I took him to the only 24/7 emergency vet I knew of—halfway across the Kansas City metropolitan area—while my son stayed with his younger sister, who slept through it all.
The vet told me he could bring the dog out of his seizures, but it would probably happen again soon. I made the call that it was time to let Rickover go, and authorized the vet to put him to sleep.
Then I drove home in tears, to a son who I’m sure expected me to bring back a well dog. Both children cried when I told them that Rickover was gone.
He was a good and gentle dog, and we still miss him.
What memories do you have of losing a pet?
I truly enjoyed reading this story of Rickover’s origins. I’m the neighbor. I did love him very much and after Al instructed me that Rickover was on a diet, I complied with his request to cut off the treats in spite of Rickover’s begging eyes. I think of him often and still have a small sculpture and his picture on my bookcase to remind me of him. He was such a great dog!
Marie, and a great neighbor you were, to us and to Rickover. We appreciated your attention to him. He was a great dog. His collar still sits on our bookcase, along with those of our two later dogs.
Theresa