A Fargo police officer who bred German shepherds on the side gave us Sharkey after he heard of the loss of our former dog. That was the last year we lived in Minnesota. Sharkey was a 2-year old full-blooded German shepherd. The breeder wanted to breed the more traditional black-n-brown shepherd, and Sharkey was fully black.
But Sharkey sure took to “shepherding.” I remember bringing him home in 2000. We had only eight children at the time. Sharkey naturally followed the kids wherever they went. They would move to the swings, Sharkey would be there. One would wonder into the garage to get a bike, Sharkey would follow. The kids would hang from his ears, try to ride his big back, pull his hair…he didn’t mind any of it. I loved to pet his thick hair, but he never really cared for my affection. He seemed to always want to be by the children.
He wasn’t a runner, which made owning him so incredibly easy. He would venture in and out of the home freely. He was always on the lookout for danger, standing on the front and back deck, aware of every miscreant coyote in the area. He was a protector at heart.
He struck fear into many delivery men in his days. I recall one summer evening a FedEx man started carrying a package up to the door. The front door was open and Sharkey–fully black, brutish, huge–just happened to walk out. Their eyes met, and though Sharkey didn’t bark or growl, his back hairs stood up and his shepherd ears stiffened. I don’t know if this released a bad memory in the FedEx man or what, but he dropped the box, turned, and ran–I mean, as-fast-as-you-can-run ran–for his truck, and off he drove.
Like any dog, Sharkey had his moments. Whenever the kids played at the creek, Sharkey would be sure to come back a muddy mess. He had a heart for chickens, too, particularly the chickens we used to own. We noticed the numbers thinning out, only to discover Sharkey sitting outside a hole in the wire where lucky chickens looking for food would squeeze through to their new found freedom. Two seconds later they were dog food. Feathers, bones and all–leaving no trace whatsoever. We patched the hole and eventually gave up on trying to keep chickens.
Another annoying thing was whenever we’d go sledding down our hill in our backyard. Sharkey would chase the kids down the hill, jump in front of the sleds, sometimes even nip at the kids’ boots. We would often chain him up to a post up by the house where he would yelp and bark in misery.
You see, Sharkey’s family were his sheep. He saw himself as our protector, a natural instinct to shepherd us where he thought we should go.
I would notice this whenever I would take the kids on a walk. Sharkey would follow along, run back and forth from the front kid to the back, always aware of where everyone was. If one of the kids wandered off the trail to do something as innocent as picking flowers, he would use his large shepherd nose to nudge him or her back on trail.
Sharkey is 11 years old. He limps and struggles to follow the kids in and out of the house. Two years ago he had a problem with pressure wounds, but Wendy’s treatments nursed him back to normal. The pressure wounds returned about two months ago, and though Wendy has been treating the wounds and bandaging and re-bandaging 2 to 3 times a day, the healing hasn’t happened. It has gotten worse. We made the decision to put the old guy down, and the thought has bred many tears since.
We’re going to miss Sharkey. He taught us much about shepherding.
About Chris & Wendy Jeub
