Ryan gave me Leddie Ledbetter on Valentine's Day the year before we got married. She's a black lab and to all stereo-types, she lives up to the rambunctious lab reputation.
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| She was a cuddle puppy, but also ate the lining under this bed out of the box springs. |
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| Leddie at 5 months, before the peanut butter catastrophe. |
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| Me & Leddie, she was about 2 years old. |
When I watched the move "Marley and Me" I laughed and understood every single element of frustration that family had with their lab.
I had Leddie in an apartment the first year. Not a wise choice for a big puppy. She chewed everything and was tough to potty train. I actually thought she wasn't that smart because she was so stubborn....I learned later I was very wrong. Stubborn yes, and also very smart.
I took her to obedience training. She failed. She was way too hyper. But...when she wanted to she could sit, speak, shake, roll over and lay down on command.
At about 6 months old, I gave her a kong to play with and filled it with peanut butter. Several hours later, she had licked all the peanut butter and started a nasty case of diarrhea. I took her to the vet and he diagnosed her with an allergy to peanut butter and it sent her body into shock. They gave her meds and she got well enough for me to bring her home. But the diarrhea continued to last for weeks. It also induced red mange. She lost most of her hair. Not a cute puppy at that time...skinny, patchy hair with major bowel problems. I had to take her weekly to be dipped at the vet to cure her mange.
She overcame the kong....continued to eat my shoes. She learned how to turn door knobs with her mouth and open doors if they weren't locked. She ate the arms of my antique chair. She tore the drywall down in my apartment bathroom. And the carpet in that apartment had to have been replaced when I moved out. Leddie knew what it meant to be potty trained,but she would just get so mad at me when I left her for work each day, that she'd go to the bathroom ALL OVER THE FLOOR.
She would run circles over and over again through the space...figure 8's and was super full of energy.
I took her everywhere with me and my family absolutely despised her. I was never allowed to have a dog inside as a kid. Leddie was the first to grace my childhood home. She terrorized my mother's furniture and carpets. Jumping over the ottomans, climbing up on the kitchen counters to eat everything that would be out for her to sample.
She had to get out....every time the door was open she ran as fast as she could and bee-lined to play outside. She was a jumper. She jumped on everyone she met, licking and greeting them.
She loved to play with other dogs.
She ate all of the filler in the box springs under my bed. She ate anything and everything that would be left in the sink or the dishwasher on plates and bowls.
She HATED pills and medicine. She could not be tricked with them put inside hot dogs or treats. She would put the food in her mouth and somehow remove the pill inside it and spit it out. She was smart.
My husband wanted her badly to be a duck dog to take hunting. You could forget that! She would retrieve them, but wouldn't put the duck in her mouth and would only "nose" the ducks back to the bank. He was so embarrassed that he only took her once with him.
I loved her though. I was a very hyper kid and my mom says Leddie was just like me. My sister pinned her the name "Devil Dog."
We took her on a trip to Mississippi for our first Thanksgiving together. On the way home we went in to eat dinner, but kept checking on her about every 10 minutes. About the third time we went out to make sure she was ok, immediately we saw blood all over the car. She had gotten her leg stuck under the gas pedal and punctured an artery. Blood was squirting all over the inside of the car. We patched it up as best we could and rushed to the vet. She was stitched up and ok.
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| Ryan and Leddie on our wedding day. Sorry, the pic won't rotate. |
After my husband and I got married we moved into a duplex and added another lab to the family...a yellow one named Logan.
They learned to love each other and for all relationships considered in doggy land,they seemed like a happy couple. They barked a lot. Our neighbors hated us. Even called animal control several times, hoping we'd be fined and had to move.
About 6 months later we bought a house...had a baby and moved across town. The house had a big back yard. No hopes of landscaping that yard with two big labs in it. Leddie didn't like to stay confined to the yard...she MUST GET OUT. It became a huge issue keeping the dogs in the back yard. She could climb and jump a 6 foot privacy fence. Logan would dig holes and they would climb underneath the fence. So...we put up an electric fence around the yard to keep them in.
One afternoon we had some trees cuts in the back yard and the fence was turned off. We were out of town and our neighbors called to tell us our dogs were out. They had both escaped and Leddie was hit by a car. It punctured her lung, knocked her hip out of place...but she survived and was ok. I made a ridiculous scene crying in front of the animal control officers as we picked her up.
We moved to NW AR and rented a house. Logan decided he didn't like Leddie anymore. He mauled her 2 times...the last time it was so bad that she had to have drainage tubes put in her back and stitches. We decided that Logan needed a new owner, especially since we had a small child of our own in the home and didn't know why his temperament had changed so suddenly.
We bought a new house and moved across town. Leddie seemed to like being single again. We had another baby and Leddie loved our girls. She was still very rambunctious and hyper, even at 7 years old.
We kept her inside whenever we were home, but that ended on a rather expensive note. I was making a corndog for my oldest daughter and laid it on a plate on the counter. Before I turned around, Leddie had jumped up on the counter and ate the entire thing, stick and all. There went our Disney vacation I had made a deposit on that morning. She ended up having emergency surgery that afternoon to remove the corndog. She laid around our house with a huge bandage wrapped around her abdomen for about 2 weeks.
From that very expensive note, she stayed outside most of the time. I'd let her in when I was at home, but she continued to eat anything that my kids left out on the counter or on the table. She would jump up on the dining room table and eat their dinner if they weren't careful to guard it.
Disciplining her didn't matter. She was very hard-headed.
In her 11th year, she developed cancer. It didn't seem to hurt her and the vet told us they could either remove it or let it be. We decided to not operate since she was so old.
We had never been able to landscape our yard, but we thought since she was 11 years old, maybe she wouldn't want to dig or tear up things if we splurge and put in new flowerbeds. After laboring over the new beds all day, we went inside so excited to have a nice new element in the yard. We woke up the next morning and found Leddie sitting in the middle of them so proud that she had chewed up all of the edging and strewed the mulch all over the yard. So much for growing out of that!
About 4 months later, I noticed she was panting a lot and sort of lethargic. I let her in and she collapsed on the floor. She wouldn't eat or drink anything. I thought it was heat stroke. She ended up drinking a little water and then started throwing up. I couldn't take her to the vet with my two little ones at home alone. She was over 100 lbs and I didn't want my girls to experience the vet and see her like that. By the time my husband got home the vet was closed and she seemed to be doing a little better.
Through the night she got sick again. By the morning it was really bad. We put her in our shower and I bathed her and Ryan carried her to the car. We each said our goodbyes, just in case she didn't make it. Ryan took her to the vet. The vet told us they didn't think it was heat stroke, but maybe some other issue and that she was in a lot of pain and suffering. She died later that day.
I tell you all of these details about a dog because I loved her. She was a huge part of my life for a long time. The first pet we had as a couple, the first loss my kids ever experienced. Our home will be vacant without her. What a journey she took us on! I'm so going to miss her sweet face and her sleeping in the floor beside my bed. Even if she was a "bad dog" she was my sweet Leddie.
