Vanessa - our second pooch

Well over a decade elapsed after Thor and I parted company. During that interval, I completed my final two years of college, four years of dental school, two years service in the U.S. Navy, and two years specialty training in Periodontics. In the spring of 1976, my bride, Pam and I moved to Williamsport, Pennsylvania and set up our Periodontics dental practice. 

When I tell people where I live, the blank, expressionless response I get stimulates me to add that Williamsport is the home of the Little League World Series. That stimulates most peoples’ faces to register some recognition. Williamsport is classified as a third class city, which I suppose is a step above being a no-class city. The population as of the 2010 census was about 31,000. I have concluded that Williamsport truly is a Little League town! Each year, towards the end of August, however, the population of Williamsport multiplies six or seven fold as it hosts the Little League World Series.

Having the preconceived notion to be a forever childless couple, Pam and I decided to get a pup. Since Golden retrievers were at the top of our list, we visited a highly regarded local breeder and were absolutely taken with her dogs. On the other hand, both of us were concerned about the long, golden coat hair constantly appearing on our business attire. We began to look at shorter hair breeds and the look and intelligence of Doberman Pinchers ultimately won us over.

photo credit

During that time, we became friends with an older couple, also childless, who were well connected to dogs, the dog community, and Doberman Pinchers in particular. At that time, they had two dobies in their pack and that number increased during the time we were friends. We located a beautiful pup, learned about crate training, and were introduced to the local “dog people”. Some of these folks were primarily breed oriented, some were primarily obedience oriented, and some were both. I was interested in obedience training.

We named our pup Vanessa, she was red, and we fell in love with her. 

We began to socialize her both with people and other dogs. Everything was progressing nicely when a few months later I noticed that Vanessa was becoming increasingly fearful of strangers and noticeably skittish. This caught me by surprise, as I could not discern anything in Vanessa’s experience that would have caused this behavior. Now, from my current, more knowledgeable perspective, perhaps Vanessa was just going through the second developmental fear period, which manifests itself at about four months of age. Even if this was the explanation, I did not know that at the time. Because her behavior was quite dramatic, my concern was that we might have a fear-biter in the making. We talked it over with our friends, the couple with the two-pack, and the four of us came to the decision that the best course of action was to give Vanessa to them. Notice I did not say “sell”, I said “give,” so there was no profit motive, at least not on our part. Our hope was that Vanessa could be raised to fulfill her best potential even though it left a hole in our hearts. There were several reasons that I was optimistic that this would all work out for the best.

First, the wife of this “mature” couple was not employed and she spent almost all of her time with her dogs. They were her “kids” and she was absolutely devoted to them. Secondly, their living environment was better than ours for both dog and man. At that time, we were still living in a two-bedroom, walk up apartment, whereas they lived in a beautiful country home that they had designed with dogs in mind, and it was surrounded by a acres of beautiful countryside. Talk about a dog’s life! Although Vanessa remained shy, which I now conclude was her genetic predisposition, her skittishness did abate and they did show her in breed competition. 

Read next post. 

Start at the very first post.