A Dog Named Cinnamon

I’ve had many dogs over my life time, but a mid-sized, mixed-breed dog named Cinnamon, was different from the rest.  For one thing, she liked to dig holes, preferably along side the house.  I tried to keep that from happening by placing black plastic on the ground and then covering it with terra cotta-toned stones. But, she still managed to dig through it.  Then, I tore out all of that, placed black plastic on the ground again, and then some fencing over that, covered it with the stones, and found that I had finally out-foxed her.

There was a large juniper bush in an area along the house that Cinnamon loved to go behind and lay in a hole that she had dug.    Never mind that she had a nice 4’ x 4’ doghouse with straw in it to go to!    But regardless, she would often lay under the branches of the bush for her private hideaway.  But one day my husband decided to trim some of the branches back.  Unfortunately, the trim job took off too much so there wasn’t any choice but to cut the rest of the bush down.  We threw it in a shallow ravine in the woods near our home.  Later that day, Cinnamon went to the edge of the ravine and mournfully observed the cut-off juniper.  She was not happy that the bush was gone.

Cinnamon had a knack for chasing and catching wildlife.  I was not a happy camper one day when I had planned to be on my way into town, but instead, I’d had to take time to grab a shovel, dig a hole and dispose of a dead opossum that she had killed in the night. One morning I looked out the window of the back door and saw the biggest darned opossum I’d ever seen, sitting motionless in the yard.  It was at least a foot high from the ground to the top of its back.  Apparently, Cinnamon knew when she was out-hulked as she did not mess with that nasty looking critter!  Sometime during that day it meandered off.

Strangely, she had a penchant for sniffing out garter snakes hidden in the grass.  She knew what they smelled like, and soon, she would have one in her mouth shaking the devil out of it.  My husband was greeted by her one late afternoon after he’d come home from work.  She had a garter snake in her mouth, but the snake had wrapped itself around her muzzle.  There she was, wagging her tail, hoping for some attention, but, in that case; my husband decided to forego any petting until later on.   Of all the dogs I’ve ever had, this was the first dog I’d ever seen that could out maneuver rabbits and other critters.  She was born with that instinct, but as far as being a watchdog, she welcomed everyone who came by to the house.  I’d rescued her from a kill shelter, which was hard on me, because I came out of that place with tears streaming down my face, knowing that most of the cats and dogs there were going to be euthanized.  Its something you don’t ever forget.  Cinnamon had a good life at least.