By Brandi Buzzard on December 17, 2024
The Final Fetch
A tribute to a well-loved ranch dog
My deepest, darkest secrets are not held by my husband, best friends, siblings, parents or therapist. Despite those being the “usual suspects” for such confidence, none of those confidants can be trusted to withhold judgement while also remaining supportive in light of my most vulnerable admissions. No, only one being holds the vault key for the entirety of my confessions of joy, sorrow, ire and envy; and she crossed the rainbow bridge last week.
Photo by Lacey Wray Photography
It's been said that a dog is the only thing on Earth that loves you more than she loves herself, and I have found that to be quite true. Cricket was the first dog I picked out, raised, trained and lived with for her entire 11 years and 6 days of life. Curiously, she was not the runt, but her mature size raised many an eyebrow when I attested to her purebred Border Collie bloodlines. Ninety-five percent white, rarely greater than 35 pounds – except in pregnancy – and standing not quite 18 inches at the shoulder, she encapsulated energy, passion, personality and comedy like no dog I’ve ever encountered.
She loved fetch, stalking horses, trailing cattle, her humans, belly rubs, killing my chickens and jumping in water tanks – in that order. We shared similar ideologies and behaviors in motherhood, neither of us treasuring the experience “in the trenches” of raising young babies or the associated responsibilities, but excelling at it, nonetheless. We live across the tracks from a forge and Cricket was well-known for leaving her pups at lunch time to pester the workers to throw gloves, sticks or a tennis ball for hours at a time. She would always return at dusk to (reluctantly) mind her brood.
As a house dog, she rarely left my side and until we had children, she was my child. When outdoors she could be found lying by the barn staring intently at horses she knew not to chase, searching for a branch three times her size to be used as a fetch tool or trailing cattle to feed bunks. Despite my grandfather’s notoriety as an expert stock dog trainer (Bill Buzzard dogs and his influence span the nation and are renowned in the Midwest), I only took the time to conduct basic obedience training with her: sit, lay down, stay, roll over, shake, go home, “sit pretty” and, to my almost immediate regret, fetch. She would play fetch to no end, and with literally anything. It was almost as if it was hard-wired into her brain at birth. I subsequently have solemnly promised myself if I ever own another Border Collie (which is a big IF), I will absolutely not teach it to play fetch.
Even though she did not have formal training as a cattle dog, Cricket’s natural instincts would more than suffice for several years of gathering and moving cattle on our ranch. Of an evening, upon hearing us bellow “WOOOOOOUUU,” she would sprint off to get behind the group and trail them in; weaving back and forth to keep them moving and darting in to nip at the hock of a wayward cow or bull.
On her final day, after a night of couch cuddles and belly rubs, I lifted her into my car and took her to a park. I suspect she had her reservations because it was difficult to coax her out of the car when we arrived – she had assumed she was returning to the last place she was taken in a car ride: the vet’s office. Yet, even in complete blindness, a brutal side effect of diabetes, she remained unwavering in her absolute obsession with fetch.
I selected a stick with enough heft to make a sound when it hit the ground so she could locate it with her semi-erect ears, one of which boasted a split tip – remnants of a run-in with a barbed wire fence years ago. Despite a severe bout of diabetic ketoacidosis, in conjunction with cancer on her pancreas, spleen and liver, her spark for fetch and belly rubs never wavered.
I find slight solace in knowing she couldn’t see my grief in her final minutes and drifted off to my insistence that she was the very best girl in the whole world, and I loved her with every fiber of my being.
Photo by Lacey Wray Photography
Ranch dogs are family members first and working partners second. As a feed truck companion, cattle mover, guard dog and confidant, she was and always will be the very best girl in the whole world. The hole in my heart and the void on the ranch are colossal.
“No heaven can heaven be, if my horse and dog aren’t there to welcome me.”
ANOTHER STORY ABOUT A WELL-LOVED DOG:
