Dog luck

For some reason, my family's luck with dogs has hit the skids lately. Talked to Mom this weekend, and along with our puppy and two others being stolen, my brother's dog had her second litter of pups the day after Christmas, and they all died (I'm not sure why).

When I was a kid, we had a cocker spaniel mix and two beagles for years. Then we had a cocker spaniel for 13 years or so, and a collie (with bad hips) for about 12 years, mostly simultaneously. There were a few other dogs in there - one of the cocker's offspring and a pair of beagle pups that had fairly long lives (the beagles had car problems) - but overall, everything lived a long time.

But since Lady and Cody died, my folks can't seem to keep a dog more than about four years. They've had a collie that my sister found in Indiana, and a string of beagle-mix dogs, and none of them so far have made it to "old age." Part of it can be ascribed to my idiot cousin's pack of livestock-harassing, dog-killing mutts who live next door (although they seem to be under control now), and now the puppy thieving, but some of it is just random stuff. Maybe now that Dad's retired and home all day, things will change.

The odd part is that when I was a kid, we were constantly finding dogs. Our house was up the road from a major sandbar party spot and swimming hole, and people also used it as a good place to abandon their no-longer-wanted dogs. The first year we lived in that house, we had something like 25 dogs dumped basically on our doorstep. We didn't have a humane society in the county, and the nearest one wanted $10 per dog to take them, so Dad managed to find homes for all of them. Luckily, he worked with a lot of people at the county, because we had a lot of dogs show up at the door over the years. One time, it was a female dog and her litter of six pups, which we had named by the time Dad got home. Another time it was a border collie cross that we would have kept if he could have stopped chasing cattle. My aunt took the Irish setter, after he "treed" Dad on the tractor the first time.