The Puppy That Found Us

Being the life and times of an outstanding dog.

We found Copper Rain, or she found us, at an outdoor sculpture exhibition in Liberty Hill, Texas in the spring of 1989. My wife, Donna, had recently been released from the hospital after she flatlined for 13 minutes during an abortive back operation. The cardiac arrest had almost killed her, and while her back was still hurting she was enjoying being alive.

We saw a show on public TV about sculptures that had been commissioned for the Bicentennial being found stored and forgotten, refurbished, and returned to public display. It was a sunny weekend in Central Texas, so we loaded up son Paul — then 13 and permanently attached to his football — and drove from our home in Austin to Liberty Hill.

There was a small puppy with a bleeding wound on top of her head guarding the exhibit. She was a rich coppery brown with enough black and white accents to give her a very distinct face. She followed us everywhere, but every time a car passed this rural school, she growled and tried to chase it, presenting a theory about the provenience of the wound on her head.

She tried to fetch Paul’s football, but her tiny mouth was not up to the task. At one point, she managed to tangle in Donna’s legs and cause her to fall, which frightened me more than it did Donna.

We saw all the sculptures and it was time to leave. The puppy with the blood on her head was still there, but there were no people. We could see only one house far in the distance. I drove there, found big dogs chained in the yard but nobody home.

What to do? The puppy backed off and sat on a plaque in front of one of the sculptures while we discussed it. Paul wanted to take her. I asked Donna how she felt about the spill from tripping over the dog.

She’s just a puppy and she has no car sense. If we leave her, she’s dead.

When I went to pick up the new four-legged member of our family, I saw the name on the plaque: “Copper Rain.” And that was the name I gave the vet when we took her in to have puppy shots and the wound examined. The vet wanted to know,

Where’d you get the Corgi?

What’s a Corgi?

The vet reminded me of a recent movie, The Accidental Tourist, and delivered himself of a rant about “dog fads” touched off by movies and “puppy farms” responding to those fads. He told me that the movie dog was a Pembroke and Copper Rain was a Cardigan and not a perfect one at that. This meant she had short hair and a tail.

At that point, her blood did not matter. But the truth is it never would have mattered.

Too small to fetch footballs, she fetched tennis balls very well. She could be jealous of her space, but she was completely tolerant of children and, later, grandchildren. I learned later that Copper Rain is also the name of a beautiful flower native to Central Texas, Habranthus texanus.

Daughter Mary grew up and left home. When Donna and I went out of town, Mary would take care of Copper, and that of course was fine with Copper. I lost a hundred pounds and took up serious running. I trained on the cinder trail around Town Lake (now Lady Bird Lake) in Austin, Copper straining on the leash ahead of me. Once she overheated and I tossed her in the water, which did not strain her good nature.

May 4, 1994 was the worst night of my life. Donna left me during a stroke after another in a string of hospitalizations. The EMT people took her away with a gentle and transparent lie that I could follow to the emergency room to find out what would happen. I had watched it happen.

I collapsed against the wall near the stain on the carpet where the EMTs had been working on Donna, howling in immobile anguish. Copper’s tongue on my cheek brought me back to the world enough to call Mary, call the rest of the family, shower and walk through the motions at the hospital, do what had to be done.

I went through over a month of walking catatonia. One of my GI buddies, Lou Axman, came to my home and became my keeper, doing what had to be done. Lou had lost his wife to cancer and so knew better than most what was going on with me.

Much later, I said something to my ex-law partner, Vivian Mahlab, about not remembering how I had gotten to the funeral home on one occasion. She had taken me.

I would have been much more embarrassed about not remembering her kindness if I had not been, still, walking dead. I was severely neglecting the pets.

At some point, Mary took charge of the pet situation, doing what had to be done. The cats, Bleu and Scarlett, and one of the dogs, Pete, would go live with Mary.

The two older dogs, Copper and Nelson, would live with me. I would pay attention to them. The dogs, of course, never blamed me for neglecting them.

Paul joined the Marine Corps, and came back from boot camp ramrod straight with a body hard as a rock and an impassive face that melted into smiles when Copper came running to lick his hand.

To my surprise, I remarried and my family grew by two kids, one grown and one almost grown, as well as a pair of Afghan Hounds, Jazz and Odessa.

Donna had been so happy when I decided to quit being a judge, having been by my side during a nightmarish election. New wife Tracy only saw the upside: respect and decent money, but she knew the decision had been made when she married me. She knew she was getting a teacher, which meant less respect and less money.

We moved our canine children from Austin to Spring Branch, on the edge of the appellate district where I considered rolling the electoral dice. When Texas turned Republican, the path became suicidal, because I had always run as a Democrat.

When my judging was reduced to being assigned as a visiting judge, we moved again to be close to my teaching gig, The University of Texas at San Antonio. Through all of our peregrinations, there had never been any serious discussion about either one of us giving up a dog. I became close to Jazz and Odessa and Tracy felt the same about Copper and Nelson.

Copper and Nelson had been outdoor dogs and Tracy took on training them to be indoor dogs. We had acquired a 250 year old log cabin of some 3,400 square feet from a new graduate of the UTSA School of Medicine. There was plenty of room, but these were adult dogs who were used to a doghouse with blankets in normal weather but being brought inside in case of storms.

Tracy set up some dog crates from when the Afghans were younger. So, the first night, we had these four crates lined up. Tracy gave the command the Afghans knew,

Go night-night

Jazz and Odessa got into their respective crates and curled up. Then, I thought, it would get interesting. But Tracy opened the door of the smallest crate and Copper marched right in, gave her blanket a couple of tugs to arrange it just right, and curled up like she did that all the time.

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Nelson was a bigger dog, the product of fence-jumping leading to conception by two pure bred dogs. Unfortunately, not the same breed. He was half cocker spaniel and half Labrador retriever. A very sweet dog, but not terribly smart.

Copper was the brains of the operation, and I knew he would do whatever she did. Sure enough, Tracy opened the last crate and Nelson went to bed. She hadn’t had to say a word to either of the “outside dogs.”

We played with the dogs a lot in those days. On one swim, I almost lost Copper over the dam at Blanco State Park. We walked them around Woodlawn Lake in San Antonio. All the dogs except Odessa loved to travel. She would sometimes get carsick. On one of those walks around the lake, a storm blew in, bringing high winds, thunder, and hail. Odessa proved she could make exceptions to her general dislike of car rides.

Copper was the eldest dog, and on one of our outdoor romps, she tore a ligament. We agonized over whether to get the surgery. It was very expensive and she was very old. We decided not, and I believe we were correct.

I was recruited away from the University of Texas to Indiana University in Bloomington. We had to rent two vehicles: a truck for our stuff and an air-conditioned van for the animals, four dogs and the five cats who kept that log cabin mouse-free.

The dogs took to the cooler temperatures, but Copper tore another ligament. This time, we opted for the surgery, because otherwise she would have completely lost the use of one hind leg, putting way too much stress on the other one. That, too, turned out to be a correct decision. It bought her a year of pleasant life patrolling her new environs.

After that pleasant year, Copper Rain was diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease. The vet gave her three to six months. I did the research myself and the vet was correct.

Copper was already at the end of a normal Corgi lifespan. The vet said the cause of the disease was adrenal tumors, which they might be able to remove at the Purdue University Vet School. My research told me that the survival rate among all dogs having that surgery was about two thirds. Copper was elderly. Purdue was on the other side of Indiana. If she died, she would die among strangers, terrified.

I opted for the least dangerous treatment, the one approved in Great Britain but not in the U.S., trilostane. The Cushing’s symptoms eased up. She had weakness in her hind legs, but she managed to get around, even up and down stairs. She fell now and then, but had no pain. Her beautiful deep brown coat turned to white sidewalls. Her muzzle had long turned gray. She was less mobile, but still a happy dog.

Came a time when I had an important business trip long scheduled to Boston. The afternoon before, Copper’s hind legs gave out entirely. I carried her outside to do her business and then made her a bed next to mine. During the night, she started crying. I put my hand on her head and she quit. After this happened a couple of times, I got up and gave her half of a pain pill prescribed for Jazz, our large male Afghan — probably an overdose for Copper’s size.

When that did not stop the pain, I remembered how much she hates to mess herself and thought maybe she needed to go outside. I picked her up and took her outside and found that she had also lost the use of her front legs.

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When I brought her inside, I took down the other half of Jazz’s pain pill. I thought for a moment that it could kill her. She cried again and I didn’t care. After I gave her that, she slept, although I did not.

I had to get on an airplane the next morning, with or without sleep. I carried Copper outside, which caused her pain.

I fed her some meat. I told her she was a good dog. I gave her some more of Jazz’s pain medication. I apologized to her for throwing her in the lake and almost losing her over the dam. I told her again she was a good dog.

We had arranged for the vet to make a house call. Tracy took me to the airport in Indianapolis so I could do what had to be done to be the breadwinner. I told Tracy that I love her and I knew she loved Copper and she would have to do what had to be done unless the vet could see something we were not seeing. I told Tracy I could not do grief and do what I had to do in Boston at the same time, so I did not want to talk about Copper by telephone.

Finally, I gave Copper Rain a dog biscuit and told her once more she was a good dog. She licked my hand.

My trip to Boston was very successful. I drank alcohol every night — highly unusual behavior. Tracy met me at the airport.