Early in 2005, we had a snowstorm that made everything look like it was covered with vanilla frosting. I grabbed my camera and took a walk in the woods behind my house in order to take pretty pictures. Cozy followed me into the yard, but I shut the gate and left her in the yard since the de-facto rule had always been dogs stay in the yard.

As I walked around in the woods behind my house snapping pictures of the frosted landscape, Cozy barked constantly. There was a small stream behind our house that looked especially picturesque, and as I started shooting, I reveled in the quiet which caused me to realize that the barking had stopped. I looked towards the house and saw Cozy lumbering through the snow after forcing herself through the gate nose-first so she could be with me. That was all she was barking about; she wanted to be with me. That’s all she ever wanted. Read More

I am a night owl. I rarely go to bed before midnight, and this night found me going to bed at close to 3:00 A.M. When I finally did go to bed, My Cozy wasn’t right. Cozy was staring at me and clearly had something to tell me. When I went through my normal litany of questions, none of them elicited the Yes! response. When I got into bed, she came over and x her head on the bed and stared at me some more. I patted her head and told her that I didn’t know what she wanted. Finally she gave up and went to lie down, though without her traditional snort of frustration. Once down on the floor she would sit there and pant, then seemingly unable to get comfortable, get up and sit somewhere else. She would lie down and whimper, then get up and repeat the process. After several repetitions she’d come over and stare at me with her please help me – you’re the only one who can look. My Cozy wasn’t right, and she was trying to tell me what was wrong. I was feeling tired and frustrated that I couldn’t figure out her message. Then I had a terrifying thought.

Bloat. Read More

Since my Cozy had her own website that many people in the Newfy community routinely visited, her page had references on thousands of other pages. This was at a time before Myspace and Facebook, when the average person was just learning about the Internet. Google did not yet exist, and Alta Vista and Yahoo were the big names in search engines.

I often receive emails sent by people from throughout the world commenting on Cozy or Daisy and how much they loved the pictures and updates, and those who searched for terms such as Newfoundland dog would find Cozy’s page since it was so popular. One day in 2002 I received an email from the Army Corps of Engineers asking if they could use one of the images of Cozy for a project. Read More

Putting our fears aside, and having had enough of Cozy being in heat twice a year, we decided to do the right thing and schedule Cozy for surgery to be spayed. This seemed simple enough; drop her off, wait a few hours, then pick her up. We had read that Newfoundlands might not need as much anesthesia as other dogs, and that we should use a vet with a lot of experience with the breed. We decided that instead of using Dr. Fritz, we would use the vet group that our breeder used, which happened to be staffed entirely by women. Being the pig man that I am, I of course assumed a veterinary office staffed with supermodels all wearing French maid and nurse’s outfits. I’m not sure where the French maid thing fit in, but we pig-men are  not really a complicated bunch. Read More