Tales From The Wilcke Household: 01/26/09

This is a really long blog, don't read this blog if you haven't read Marley and Me or if you plan to see the movie!

I've been told by my sister-in-law, Beth, that I absolutely positively MUST read "Marley and Me" (I know it's supposed to be underlined, but I can't figure out how to do it-ha). So I bought it when I got to Orlando International, and started reading it on my flight out to Phoenix. Now, I've looked at this book at Borders before, and every time I put it back thinking, "Eh, I don't really need to read anyone else's story about a Yellow Lab, I have one! I know how they are!" BUT, now since Beth was insisting that I read it, I thought maybe it might be a good one.
Boy was I in for a surprise. This book is hysterical! The story is absolutely wonderful and I can pretty much relate with EVERYTHING in the book. Of course it's not all about Marley, it's a LOT about Marley, but it's also about the story of this family and how they get through issues and problems together. It's a very warm story, with hysterical antics and tidbits of dog-gone bad dog situations. But above all, I'm very grateful that I read this book, especially since now I can recall many situations with Kona that I've never blogged about. My kids obviously know Kona, but they are so young that when they grow up they won't remember him much. I'd love to write about Kona so my kids can look back at this and read what our dog was like.
When Nathan and I were in Santa Barbara, California, we decided that we wanted to get a dog. I had thought about it before he actually moved out to California, but decided to wait to learn more about the adoption process and to understand what I should know about adopting a dog.
I got cats first, adopted from Los Angeles Kitten Rescue. I adopted two 4 month old black (one one with white paws and belly) cats. Saki and Ali blessed my life! Ali ended up contracting Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP) in his first year and passed on to kitty heaven before he turned 1. Very sad, very very sad. He was an awesome cat. He did all of the great things that cats do, like cackling at bugs and jumping really high trying to get the feathers glued to a stick. He also fetched. YES, fetched. I would crumble up a post-it note into a tight ball, and he would run up to me and wait for me to throw it. He found great pleasure in running across the house and batting the little yellow paper ball around on the hardwood floors. This was Ali's claim to fame, and bless his soul, I still miss him.
So after the cats got settled in, then one died, I thought, "Why not get a dog?" Ha. Actually, it was perfect! Nathan and I found a breeder located in San Luis Obispo (about a two hour drive north of Santa Barbara), and drove up there to see the puppies once they were born. We had first pick of any of the males (a whopping 3 of them), or we had third choice of females (all 5 of them). These puppies were the MOST adorable things I had ever seen. They were a bundle of yellow fluffy puppies, and I was instantly in love. We met his mother, but didn't meet the father since he didn't live with them. We picked Kona because we loved the way he looked and also the way he interacted with us. He was sooo young! It was hard to leave that day without him, but he still had some growing to do, so we drove back to Santa Barbara after putting our deposit down for the pup.
I assume after I got home that I went out and got all of the puppy stuff for my house, but I don't really remember this part. I do, however remember the kennel that I had bought for him in the beginning. It was HUGE, compared to him! He ended up growing out of the thing about a year later.
When the pup was weaned (only 6 weeks), we drove back up to SLO to get him. We still had the naming thing to do, so I did my research on names on the internet. I loved the name Kona, but Nathan wasn't really sold on it. The name is Hawiian, and it means "golden coast", which I liked since he's yellow, and we lived in Santa Barbara.
We got the pup and loaded him up in the car, but of course not before we argued like children about who got to HOLD the dog and who got to drive. Just like kids, we agreed that since we'd have stop and let the pup go potty at some point, then we'd switch. I had the pleasure of driving first, holding second.
We did indeed stop for the pup to run in the grass at a park about halfway home. He was so sweetly walking and frolicking in the grass! He even went potty, and we acted like our child had just won a gold medal! ;) I started calling him Kona just to try out the name, and to me it fit wonderfully. I also liked the names Marty and Montey, but neither of those seemed to fit (from what Nathan said-ha).
I got to hold him for the rest of the drive back to Santa Barbara, and Kona decided that I was the one he was going to puke on first. Awesome.
We got him home and scheduled his first trip to the vet for his shots, ID chip and flea medication... he was full of fleas! We started his potty training, which was awesome to live in a house with hardwood floors instead of carpet for this part of his training. He got a hold on the concept pretty quickly, if he had accidents they were minor, so I think we did a pretty good job!
During the night I put him in his kennel, and he did the typical whine that dogs do. It was so pathetic it made me laugh and cry at the same time. He'd start off really loooow, looow, looooow, and slowly make his pitch higher and higher and higher and louder and louder and louder! It really was hysterical. Do you know why they do this? It is a survival trait in puppies to alert their mother if they are lost and alone... they whine so their mom can find them and return them to their pack. Interesting huh? Well not at 3 AM when you're trying to sleep. I stuck to my guns though and put a clock down by his kennel with a loud ticking, and before I knew it, he was fine in his kennel. Whew.
Kona grew so fast, so incredibly fast. We had so much fun with him, taking him with us wherever we went, especially to the beach. Before he learned about depth perception, he walked off of the back porch that was about four feet up from the ground straight through the wrought-iron railing and tried to walk on top of a dense bush, thinking it was just a continuation of the ground. It was hysterical!
We introduced him to a dog park (Nathan, do you remember the name of the park?) that we ended up frequenting at least 3 times a week to let him run and play with other dogs. He started off with a puppy collar, in rasta colors, which I still have and will never get rid of... ever. We also learned that he was super sensitive with is front paws and the only people to touch them were us since he trusted us.
Kona never really was much trouble (besides the one time he chewed a stick, got a piece stuck between his teeth and had to go under general anesthesia to have it surgically removed), and still isn't. Since he was kennel trained early on, he would stay in his kennel while I was at school. He didn't chew up shoes or anything like that, but he did make teeth marks on some of my furniture. He has a love for socks... clean, dirty, adult size, baby size, whatever. He doesn't eat them, chew them or ruin them, he simply picks them up and transports them to another location in the house and puts them down. He also does this with sneakers... but only one of them. Usually it's when he needs a walk. Silly dog.
Only one time did Kona get sick in his kennel. It was disgusting, there was poop EVERYWHERE in the kennel, and it was runny... really really runny. I had to take the kennel outside and hose it down it was so bad. I think he had gotten sick from a bone I had given him. Poor thing, he hung his head in shame when I got home.
Kona did cause trouble in some respects. During the treacherous training at Brook Institute, sometimes I didn't get a chance to walk the dog when I was supposed to, or happened to leave him at home a little too long. Of course, me being a softy, couldn't just put my dog in a cold metal kennel without something soft to lay on, so I bought him dog pillows. On these days that I was gone too long, it snowed in Santa Barbara. Particularly in my family room. Kona would shred the pillows and get every ounce of white stuffing out of them. DOH! Another $30 down the drain. I'm pretty sure I finally learned and stopped putting pillows in the kennel. ;)
When Kona was old enough, I had an electric fence put in around my house. I lived on a busy two lane road in Santa Barbara, and I was so worried about Kona getting out and running into the street. I decided to go with the electric fence instead of putting up a wooden fence. Now my memory is failing me, because I can't remember if Nathan built the wooden fence first and then we put in the electric fence... I'm pretty sure it was the wooden fence first... whatever. The point of this story is that Kona got OUT of the back yard one day. I had trusted the chicken wire fence that bordered our neighbor enough to leave the dog outside in the gorgeous Santa Barbara weather while I was at school for never-ending film development time. As I was returning home, I had about three messages on my phone from my vet saying that they had Kona there for me to pick up. WHAT? WHAT? WHAAAAAT? I freaked out. The dog had been found ACROSS the busy street on our usual walking route. He had chewed through and snuck out through the back fence, gone around the house, crossed the street and was about 1/8 of a mile away from our house when he was found. Bless those people for taking him to his VET!
As Kona got a bit older in Santa Barbara, these were our favorite activities and fun things I remember:
-Going to puppy obedience school at night taught by Wency Lopez in the parking lot of a vet's office in Goleta. He did so well, and by the end could obey many commands including "shake". Wency also took the dogs across the street to McDonalds' and would get one big soft-serve vanilla ice cream cup and take turns letting the dogs nicely lick the ice cream off of the spoon. She was a big believer in teaching the dogs to "take it nicely" from our hands.
-How hard he would whine when he figured out we were driving to Summerland beach or the park, and how early he would start whining... usually when we first hopped onto the 101. When we ended up leaving Santa Barbara and moving to Iowa, he whined for three hours after we got onto the 101 thinking we were going to the beach.
-We'd go to Summerland beach with a chuck-it and tennis ball and Kona would fetch that ball until he no longer could walk. If Nathan or I had a tennis ball, it was just as good as a leash. He went NOWHERE. If we didn't have a tennis ball, he knew to go run and play with the other dogs, which was always a BLAST to watch.
-When fetching the ball at the beach, he'd run to get it and when bringing it back, would make a gigantic circle around us to the left before bringing it to us. He'd also dig in the sand and bury his ball, and also, more common than I wanted, he'd go poop in the water.
-Summerland beach sometimes had dead seals on it and Kona would go rub in them and stink so bad he had to have a bath. SICK! It was the hardest thing to get him away from those carcases! I'm just happy that he left the nude sunbathers alone (Yes, Summerland Beach was well know for it's nude sunbathing followers... double SICK).
-He'd fetch sticks at the park and get so dirty that he'd need a bath. He'd never let us get too far away before racing to catch up to us. We'd try to give him a bowl of water after the park, but he was a heck of a lot more content to drink from a water bottle squirting water at his face. (This park was absolutely amazing, it was up on a gigantic cliff above the coastline, and the view was amazing!)
As the year 2003 came to an end, Nathan and I had gotten engaged and moved back to Ames, IA. We never, ever, ever, thought about leaving Kona behind, he was officially our family member now, and we were excited to move our little family (including psycho kitty Saki) to our new home in Iowa.
Kona had the best of the best yard in Iowa, a huge space of grass to run and play and chase the tennis ball around the yard. The only problem? What the heck was that white stuff that it so COLD on his feet? Kona actually loved the snow after he got used to it a bit.
Things changed in Iowa since there was no beach to visit and most of the parks had leash laws. We broke those laws for a while, but then Kona seemed to lose his ability to listen well enough to be off leash (of course with the exception of when Nathan had a tennis ball). We did let him off leash when we'd take him to the back of our developing neighborhood so he could run and investigate and eat construction workers left-overs left in trash bags. SICK... again.
By this point of Kona's life, we were a family, he loved us, we loved him, and there weren't many new surprises about his personality... until James was born.
Kona got a lot of my attention before James was born since I was so big I stayed home a lot. I'd throw the ball to Kona on a daily basis in the back yard, and we had a pretty good routine going. Enter an infant.... After we brought James home, Kona wouldn't look at me in the eye for three weeks. He was so MAD at me. I don't really even think it was just because I brought a baby home, I think it was because I had taken my attention away from him and was giving it to this new being in the house. Eventually though, I learned that Kona still was a softy and if I just rubbed his ears once a day, he was agian my buddy.
The other part of Kona that came out with a baby in the house is his intense dislike of toys making music or talking. We figured this out with our phones, not toys, to begin with. Kona really disliked the ringing of our new cordless phones that we had bought for our home. We were trying to pick a ringtone one day and Kona was howling like he was trying to sing along. To this day, he howls when toys are singing, talking, playing music... EVEN over the monitors from upstairs. Poor dog. That must hurt!
Kona was fine when Kaitlyn came along, he wasn't so mad at me that time. Ever since he's been wonderful with the kids. He loves them too, although he hates their toys. He has significantly calmed down since his puppy years, but whenever someone comes over to our house he's still the barking, energetic, jumping (sigh) puppy that he was when he was 2. I was told at the vet last time that Kona will be 7 next June, qualifying him to be a senior. Yes, that's not for anther 5 months, but still, seeing Kona as a senior makes me sad. I know that there will be times ahead of us that will be tough, and obviously since dogs don't live as long as us, we'll have to deal with him dying someday. I just pray that I have the patience to enjoy Kona while he's still here with us, despite the poop in the yard, the enormous amounts of dog hair in my house, and his wretched breath. He sure loves to give kisses. ;)

Things I don't want to forget about Kona:
-Him finding James' socks in the bottom of the diaper bag and bringing them to me when James was only 1 or 2 months old.
-His seat belt that he had in Santa Barbara, and the seat cover we had in the 4-Runner.
-The time when he had to be rushed to the vet when we were out of town and another dog at the kennel had bitten his ear.
-How he goes into Uptown Dog "ready to party."
-His glazed eyes and his blissful sighs when I rub his ears.
-How he collapses and rolls over for me to pat his belly when I am even remotely interested in petting him.
-DROOL!
-Death by kisses and licking.
-How he barks in his sleep and runs while dreaming. He gets so loud it wakes me up!
-He won't give up the tennis ball, ever, unless I bribe him with a treat bone.
-When I have a rawhide bone to give him, he sits, lays down and rolls over without any prompting by me or Nathan. We usually have him wait and do things on our command before he gets the bone.
-How sharp his puppy teeth were! OUCH!
-How he helped himself to the food on the table when we weren't around and decorated the top of the table with scratches.
-His "smile".
-Playing "hut 1, hut 2, HIKE!" and watch him go nuts.
-How he was afraid of the waves in the ocean until Nathan got him to chase the ball out there and swim for it.
-Him swimming for a stick or tennis ball in the Skunk River in Ames until he was so tired he could've drowned.
-How much I love him. SAP!

Kona's litter, he's the one in the back facing the camera.