Pirate Dogs Bios #3: The First Mate

We met at the Stratham NHSPCA shelter. The celebrated Tan Dog, Saint Hannah, had been put down because of a recurring cancer and at that time, the Captain wasn't exhibiting the personality she later developed. So we joined the line on an autumnal Tuesday morning for the debut of the latest dogs entering the NH shelters from other states' kill centers. Since people in NH pay attention to and follow spay policies and recommendations, the state has a paucity of animals available for adoption and imports dogs from other states. The animals arrive on Thursday, spend a few days being examined and evaluated, and are made available for adoption on Tuesday of the following week. So we arrived right at the time of the shelter's opening, at the very front of the queue. ( If you are in the market for an animal who'd benefit from your love and attention, check them out http://www.nhspca.org/ )

We passed several dogs we'd seen previously and wished them well. Then at the back of the kennel there was a large cage. A black form ran to the very back of it. Too shy?? We almost passed by but then the creature rushed forward to the door of the cage, grasping a rubber ball in its jowls, talking to us intensely and pleadingly. It was more than we could stand---I spread my arms in front of the cage and sent my wife to get a leash so we could get the dog out of the kennel. The sign on the wall said "Ella."

Ella bounded out of the cage and was so appreciative at the attention. One wise policy the NHSPCA has is having the existing pet(s) meet the prospective adoptee to determine their ability to get along. The Captain and Ella hit it right off. Would that we could foresee how well.......

So we took Ella home. We quickly realized that "Ella" sounded too much like "Emma", the Captain's given name, so we renamed the newest addition after a couple of our favorite New Mexico locales--Ella was christened Magdalena Cochiti. Of course that's far too many syllables for a dog to comprehend, so we call her Leny (pronounced lane-y), a contraction of Magdalena.

Leny is a Sharprador, i.e., a Labrador Retreiver Shar-Pei cross. She's actually more of a Flop-ra-dor in behavior, using the Shar-Pei fighting tactic of suddenly lying down--flopping--- to get under her adversary. A strange mixture---mostly a Lab's black body with a face that has massive jowls and thanks to Shar-Peian wrinkles, Leny frequently sports a worried or concerned expression.

As previously noted, Leny was thought to blame for some destruction in our house and joined the Captain on the CPS Nargle. Leny has the propensity to skin problems that afflicts Shar-Peis. We'd had her less than a week when she barreled around the corner of the house, slipped, and impaled herself on a cut-back rose bush. This required her to be confined in a lampshade for several days

and the wounds flushed with betadine. What a way to bond with your new puppy--lifing it into the bathtub, flushing her wound out, lifting her out of the bathtub, not cuddling her but rather all the while hoping to keep her away from your body so you don't stain your clothes with the solution......Wonder what Leny thought of it all?


She has fully recovered and is as sweet as she was in that cage in Stratham NH. Condemned to an Ohio kill shelter as an "unclaimed stray" she found her way to NH and now lives with her family and the Pirate Dogs in NM. Leny comes immediately when summoned and is never more than an arm's length away, waiting for a belly rub. "Unclaimed Stray"???? Please..........