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| Tarragon |
| Tarragon is the newest addition to the family. She is a true mutt. We really are not sure what she is, but we are guessing she's part German Shepherd, Part Rottweiler, and part hound. It doesn't really matter. We lover her anyway. My boyfriend, Rondell, and I adopted her last June. How she came into our life is a simple story of providence. Rondell, a mutual friend, Bonnie, and I were walking back to my house from a restaurant. I live near HY147 in Durham, and we had to go under the overpass for the highway to get to my house. As we approached the overpass, we saw one of my neighbors messing with the fence. When we got closer, we asked her what she was doing and if she needed any help. She was walking her dog and we wondered if something was wrong with her or her pet. As it turned out, her dog had found this poor little dehydrated, wormy, flea bitten puppy that had gotten tangled up in the fence. My neighbor was trying to untangle her, but could not get to the puppy because of her dog. I climbed over the fence, untangled the puppy and handed the puppy to Rondell. This poor puppy had a rubber band wrapped around her little tail and a shoestring collar that was too tight around her neck. We promptly cut both the rubber band and the shoe string off of her neck and then tried to figure out what to do. Our neighbor didn't want the puppy, but couldn't bare to see her suffer. Since both Rondell and I knew vets who would help adopt abandoned and stray pets, we decided to take her home, clean her up, and then figure out what to do with her. However, within the short two block walk from the overpass to my house, Rondell and I became smitten with this little puppy and we decided to keep her. We brought her home, bathed her, fed her, wormed her, and let her sleep. The next day we took her to the vet, got her first shots and a few "atta' boys" from the vet for being so kind to the poor abused puppy. We were informed that she was about 6-7 week old. Our fears for the health of her tail were allayed by the vet so seemed to think that other than a little swelling, her tail seemed to be fine. She was a blessed little creature for she probably would not have survived another night on her own. (She really was badly dehydrated.) Now, almost 10 months later, she is a lively healthy, still growing puppy who is going through the "Terrible Chews". She now stands 20 inches at the shoulder, weighs 45 pounds (and still growing), has the markings of a German shepherd, and has a small tear in her right ear which was an initiation gift from Cumin. We've had Tarragon spayed and had her double dew claw which were on her hind feet removed as well ( I didn't really want to do this, but she was getting them caught in things, and we were afraid that they would be removed the hard way if we didn't do something about it.). She's very bright, likes to fetch, dig and pick on her older brother, Jean Luc, who she now out weighs by 10-15 pounds. We are enjoying her a great deal. She is the fourth "spice" named dog that I've owned. Hopefully she'll be around for a long time to come. :-) |
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| Cumin and Tarragon August, 2000. |
| Photo by Gene Keenum |
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