She came to us in a late autumn when it was cold and the trees were nearly bare. She didn’t know how to play at first, but Regina was patient and taught her to run and roll through the leaves.
My favorite picture of her is still the one with Regina waving her arms and dancing in front of her in the yard as Sugar joins in. Her front paws are in the air, and she is bouncing on her back feet.
It took a while to get to that point. The shelter folks said she had been mistreated and didn’t trust people. She would back up when we approached her and wouldn’t take food from our hands.
We didn’t plan for an inside dog. There was a big fenced yard and a garage where she could sleep on cold nights. It had a heater for her and a bed with blankets. She never tried to go in the house.
One night when it was icy and windy and she had been with us for just a week or so, I checked on her after Regina was in bed. Sugar was shivering but had never made a sound.
I took her in, and we slept together on a blanket on the living room floor. She never spent another night outside.
We soon learned that she was willing to stay in the cold or accept any other unfavorable circumstances without complaining because she was terrified of doing something wrong.
Even after we had a door installed for her to go back and forth from the house to the yard, she wouldn’t use it unless we were there to tell her it was okay. It sort of defeated the purpose of the door.
She would not go out an open gate from the back yard to the front without our verbal approval or get on a bed or into a chair with us unless we invited her.
That’s why we had dog beds for her in three different rooms. Sugar knew they were hers and would use them without waiting for us to tell her she could.
She was a beautiful dog despite her mixed up ancestry. She was white as sugar, and the name we gave her reflected both her disposition and appearance. She had floppy ears and oversized eyes that could melt a glacier.
We showered her with so much attention that it didn’t take her long to become a little spoiled and haughty. But that was just with us. She was still uneasy and standoffish around others.
Even when the grandkids visited she would hesitate some before interacting with them. After a while, she would feel secure enough to dive into all the clamor and commotion, stealing their books and colors and making them chase her down to get them.
Sugar would impress them in a lot of ways with her intelligence. Like going to her toy basket and retrieving whichever stuffed animal they asked her to get.
She loved morning walks in the neighborhood with Regina, rides in the back seat with her head out the window and watching blue heron soar over the river in her back yard.
When she was young, Sugar liked to chase squirrels, scatter birds that gathered under the feeders and catch lizards and release them unharmed.
In her later years, she was content to just observe the creatures that shared her domain and relish their assorted songs and sounds.
She enjoyed Regina singing to her and would perk up when her name was in the songs. She liked naps, sunshine in her face, fresh water in her bowl and lying with her chin on the window ledge watching for me to come home from work.
Sugar was unnerved by insects buzzing around her head, sirens, thunder and other loud noises. We could never raise our voice even when LSU was playing on TV.
She left us after 12 years in the same season that she had arrived so fragile and afraid. Much of her final day was spent sitting still and quiet in the yard watching and hearing things she loved as if she knew it would be her last time.
Sugar’s love and joy filled our house, and her loss is painful. We try to take some comfort knowing that we gave her the good life she deserved for a lot of dog years but realize that she always gave back much more than she got.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES