Lassie – Our Wonder Dog

By Arlene Shovald

Lassie didn’t quite seem like the right name for a German Shepherd, but that is what our son decided to call her. She was a six-week-old, mostly German Shepherd, that my husband acquired in a visit to a local country tavern in the backwoods of Upper Michigan about 1970. Our family had never had a dog, so I guess he decided it was about time to adopt one. Perhaps a few beers had something to do with the decision as well. When he brought Lassie home, she just fit in his two hands.  She became the family dog, but mostly, she belonged to our oldest son, Bobby, who was about ten years old at the time. At first, he balked at having a girl dog, but it didn’t take long before Lassie won his heart and the entire family’s.

Lassie had to be an outside dog because of my allergies, but she didn’t lack attention. She became Bobby’s faithful companion, accompanying him on camping trips into the nearby woods. One of my favorite old black-and-white pictures is of our son and his beloved dog at one of those campsites with the campfire glowing in the background. I was fortunate, on that occasion, to be invited to accompany a boy and dog to a not-to-distant campsite and take a picture.

Another time, the boy and dog were brought home by the police! He was on his way to visit a friend and had a pack on Lassie’s back. The officer thought he was running away from home and brought them both back.  

Lassie seemed to have an inborn sense of protectiveness. Swimming was always one of my favorite things to do, and pregnancy didn’t stop me. Wearing my maternity swimsuit back in 1965, I took to the water at my in-law’s cottage, intending to swim across the bay and back. It would have been an easy swim, but the minute I started to swim, Lassie jumped in the water alongside me and kept swimming in front of me, preventing me from going any further. Finally, I gave up and returned to shore, deciding she must know something I didn’t. I never did figure out what that was, but she was definitely preventing me from swimming across the bay, possibly because of my condition or perhaps just because she knew there was some other risk involved.

Our fourth child, Anne, was about 18 months old when I left her outdoors in her playpen for just seconds while I went into the house for something. As anyone who is a mother knows, that’s all it takes for disaster to happen. When I returned, the playpen was empty.

Lassie was tied, but we turned her loose, hoping she would find Anne, and she did. A few minutes later, we heard a commotion in the alley behind our house. We found Lassie hanging on to Anne’s diaper and attempting to drag her back home. Needless to say, Anne was furious, having escaped the playpen and gone off on an adventure of her own, but Lassie saved the day.

Lassie was more than a pet. She was a family member. We took her on family visits, and one Thanksgiving, we had dinner at my parent’s house, and my mother sent me home with an extra pumpkin pie. I had the pie in my lap, and Lassie was in the back seat with the kids when, for some reason, she decided she wanted to be in front. She jumped over the seat and landed paws first in the pumpkin pie. It was quite a mess, and I think Lassie would have apologized if she could talk. That story has been one of our favorite conversation pieces for decades.

When she escaped from the backyard and was missing for four days, we were devastated, but Lassie was as important to the neighbor kids as she was to our own; fortunately, they were all on the lookout for her. A neighbor boy heard barking coming from an abandoned garage, and that’s where he found Lassie. She had been chasing something and jumped through a missing window, but she couldn’t escape the space because it was below ground level. She had no food for four days, but fortunately, there were water puddles in the garage, and she survived.

Lassie was seven years old when she developed hip dysplasia, which is common in German Shepherds of that age. Even now, more than 60 years later, my heart breaks as I recall the day we took her to the veterinarian and had her euthanized, which was the only compassionate thing to do to save her from her pain. But she lives on in the photos and the memories of her.