Happy Birthday Diva Gretchen

My Schnauzer, Diva Gretchen turned 13 today.  I got her for Mother's Day in 1998.  That was the year I retired from teaching. Don and I drove to a breeder in Marshall, Texas and picked out my puppy.   I had never thought about getting a Schnauzer.  I seem to be more attracted to hairy little dogs like the Bichon Friche that had just died.  But I had read a lot about how Schnauzers like attention and are very out going, so I wanted to try that breed.  We had anticipated that this tiny puppy would sleep in a crate in the laundry room right next to our master bedroom.  So we fed her and put her to bed.  Just about the time we were in bed, this howling came from the laundry room. We could not believe such a loud howl could come from such a tiny puppy.  That's how she got her name Diva.  We thought she sounded like an opera singer.  The next night we moved her crate into our room.  When she was potty trained, she slept in the bed next to me.

Diva and Jacquie

Since I had already announced my retirement, I brought Diva to school in her crate everyday.  I was teaching Creative Writing to kindergarten through 3rd grade, so a lot of our writings were about pets and such. Diva made a great prop.  It also made her a very good dog to children.

When she was about 2 years old, I decided I wanted to breed her.  She had 8 beautiful puppies, but in about 24 hours they started dying one by one.  I finally took the last 2 to the vet.  He said he didn't see anything wrong with them, but I need to go back home and bring the mother.  I never did know why the 6 died.

It was very interesting watching Diva train her 2 puppies, one male and one female.  Since their crate was upstairs in our bedroom and the water and food bowls were down stairs, they had to go up and down the stairs a good bit.  Diva helped the female puppy up the stairs, but she left the little male. He would just sit on the bottom step and howl.  Schnauzers are good at howling.  When she got to the top of the stairs, Diva would turn around and bark at the male puppy until he would got enough courage to very carefully take one step at a time.  This was the way they always went up and down the stairs.  My husband believes she was just making the male puppy strong and brave.  I sold the female to my oncologist and kept Max.  At 6 weeks old he was already biting to get his way. It was obvious no one would buy him.  He never did get to be a good dog like Diva.  Finally, one day he and Diva escaped from the shop to run after the FedEx man and Max got run over.  My son-in-law said he believed Diva may have pushed Max into the car's path.

Diva Lilly and Max

It all worked out for the best since Max had already bitten at my first grandchild. Because this litter of puppies went so badly, Diva never had any more puppies. 

But today Diva has been a great member of our family for 13 years.  Happy Birthday DIVA and may you sing for many more years!

Diva & Zoie