Cassie's life

Cassie was born in Minot, North Dakota on July 24th 1986.  I bought her in November of that year.  When I went to look at the pups, they were in a large fenced in area.  I went inside the fence and sat as far away from the pups as I could. After about ten minutes, I whistled one time and Cassie was the only pup to come over to me. I bought her on the spot!

My intention when I bought Cassie was to train her as a hunting dog, especially for upland game.  I had gone to the library and read up on training dogs for bird hunting and was prepared to train her myself.  She was the easiest dog to potty train and I remember thinking that she would be a good dog to train.  It was slow going at first, as this was my first try at training a dog and had never hunted birds before.  As I got better and more patient, Cassie started to come around, and before long I had Cassie responding to whistle commands and hand signals.  This went on for her entire puppy life. Finance's prevented me from getting the shotgun that I wanted and I soon gave up on the training  but Cassie didn't seem to mind to much.  I still took her out for long walks in the field and she really enjoyed our time together.

Cassie had become such a wonderful companion, I didn't mind so much that she would probably never get a chance to be the hunting dog that I had hoped for.  I would take her out with me and my friend Bob to shoot clay pigeons, after I finally bought a shotgun.  Cassie would go crazy every time we were ready to shoot.  In her mind, we just couldn't do it fast enough.

One time in particular, I decided to go out dove hunting on my own, so I could take Cassie.  When a dove came out of the tree's, I took a shot and hit it with the first shot.  I looked over to see what Cassie was going to do, wondering if she would go after the bird, and as I looked she was sitting there with my shell in her mouth.   I told her she was a good girl, because I hated to loose shells.

From that time on, she was strictly my buddy.  We went everywhere together, except on hunting trips. Any other time, if you saw me, you saw Cassie by my side.

After I retired from the Air Force, my family and I moved to Arizona to be with my family.  It had been too many years that I had been separated from my brother and we had a lot of catching up to do.  One thing my brother and I had talked about for a long time was getting into rocketry.  We decided to give it a try and started out small.  I can remember the first time we launched one of our rockets.   Cassie became very excited.  After a while we started to build bigger rockets   and it became apparent that we were going to need a larger area to launch at.   We ended up going out to a place called Murray Springs.  It afforded the area we needed and not many people ever went there.  Every time we launched, Cassie could hardly stand it.  She would start barking as to say "hurry up and launch."   One time, I launched one rocket that drifted way off course and we had a hard time finding where it went.  Cassie was out in front as usual.  This time she kept running up ahead and then back to me, as I wondered around looking for my rocket.   Finally, I decided to see what she  wanted to show me and it turned out to be my rocket.  It was covered with slobber.   From that point on, we watched where she would go and she never failed us.  As our rockets got bigger, the more we relied on her.

The last year, when we were in North Dakota, Cassie was attacked by a wild dog which really tore her hind muscle's up bad.  She never did regain the strength in her hind legs.  After a few years, she started to get worse, but always had a heart of gold and would never quit.  We would go on walks and she never gave up, even when I was tired.

Around the first part of 1998, I took Cassie to the vet to see if there was anything to help her legs.  We started her on some injections three times a week.   They seemed to help some, but after the injections, she was put on some medication that I would give her.  This went on for several months, but she never showed any improvement.  She was actually getting worse and by mid summer she was just to bad to keep hanging on to her.  In July of 1998, Cassie was put to sleep.  The bird feeder at the beginning of this page is Cassie's final resting spot.

Cassie was one of those rare pets that comes along only once in a life time.  She was the most loving dog and she thought that every person on earth was put on this planet for her to love.  I will always miss her.

This page is dedicated to you Cassie.  Thank you for all the love and enjoyment you gave me over your short life.

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