A dog named Opie

He came bounding into our lives almost 11 years ago as a scared little toy poodle, about two months old with a furry red coat.

Opie was our third dog, proceeded by a black lab named Lucky and a poodle that we had for 17½ years named Mopsy. She was going to be our last dog. The heartbreak of having to put one down that was part of the family for that long is gut-wrenching.

My wife was teaching at the time and the more she went back to our empty home after school, the more she knew another dog was needed for her to get over the grief.

I was her stumbling block. I did not want another dog.

So, she devised a plan.

She talked to me about a red-coated boy poodle that we could name Opie, touching on my love for the “Andy Griffith Show.” Her plan worked. I caved.

She found what she was looking for in Wayne, W.Va., where a woman was breeding poodles. We went to her home and she showed us three babies from the latest litter. Opie was one of them and my wife picked him out of the crowd because he pooped in her hand. It wasn’t much poop but enough of a sign for her that this was our Opie.

We could not take him home yet and the breeder sent us photo updates and invited us to visit until he was old enough to leave his mother.

My wife timed his homecoming so that she would be out of school for the summer. We did a poor job of training Mopsy, but she vowed it would be different with Opie. She may have missed her calling. It wasn’t long before she had Opie doing some simple tricks with treats as rewards. More importantly, he was potty trained in a short amount of time. As she advanced her potty training with him, she draped bells on a string over our doorknob on the back door and taught him to ring them when it was time to go to the bathroom.

Opie was a good dog and very smart. He learned to use the bells when it was time to use the bathroom but also figured out that he could use them just to get out of the house and into our fenced-in backyard to run and play, too.

The bells rang a lot at our house.

We called Opie a quirky dog. When he was uncomfortable with a situation, like his ball rolling too close to a table, he scratched vigorously with his back legs. He was friendly with everybody although our daughter’s beagle, who probably was four times bigger than him and had a bark bigger than that, scared him when it came to mealtime.

My wife would get between them, letting Ace know who was in charge. Ace ate out of his bowl and she fed Opie by hand. That then became the norm. Did I mention he was spoiled?

Opie loved his toys and he was familiar with all of them. When we picked up his toys to run the vacuum or pick up before company came, he was not happy. After we returned them to where he liked them, it was like he counted then by touching his nose against each one. He was such a good boy.

His favorite toys were an orange pig ball that squeaked, was soft and would bounce in different directions. The other was a floppy-eared dog he could sling around a room with the shake of his head. When he was young, he loved to play fetch and would fly around the yard at top speed until wearing out.

Opie was a good dog. And boy was he fast!

He loved when people visited and especially loved his second home at my in-laws when we would go out of town. They loved him so much and always told us that Opie was such a good boy.

He had keen senses, especially hearing. When he heard a doorbell ring on television, he sprung up from the couch and raced to the front door. We had a doorbell, but it had not worked since Opie became part of the family. We never understood how he knew to go to the door. One of life’s mysteries. He could hear our car as we pulled into the driveway or hear someone come in the front before anybody else. He was like Radar on “MASH.”

We moved from Ashland to Florence two years ago to be near our grandchildren. We don’t have a fenced-in yard now, so Opie would have to adjust with us. He did. And he and I would take our 25-minute walks around our condo neighborhood. He basked in just being with me. The condo neighbors loved him.

Opie was most definitely my wife’s dog, but he knew who to beg from when food was on the table. I made sure to always have something for him.

He was equally loved by his humans.

We had to say goodbye to Opie on Sunday. He had congestive heart failure and his overall health was in serious decline. Life was not the same for him. The walks had stopped, he wasn’t eating or drinking. He was coughing, sometimes for long periods. It was such a sad day for us. He died on my wife’s lap. We chose to be with him to the end.

Opie was such a good boy.

They say dogs don’t have souls, but looking into those expressive dark eyes often made me wonder.