My very first dog was Sheba. She was a full-grown stray, German Shepherd mix who "followed" my cousin home. Her family already had a dog, a big German Shepherd who did NOT like other dogs, so they called my parents. I was a toddler at the time, so forgive me! My parents brought us over to see her, us being my two older siblings and I. I, not knowing any better, toddled over to this big strange black (and tan) dog, and, before anyone could stop me, grabbed her tail with both hands and yanked! My dad says his heart about stopped and he was poised to dive between me and the dog before I got bitten or worse, but to the adults' surprise, Sheba just turned her head, growled a quick soft growl at me, and looked at my Dad as if to say "help me!" Well, that was that, Sheba was ours!

I don't remember life before Sheba. We grew up together, though she was already grown up! She was the best, smartest dog in the whole world! (Don't try to convince me otherwise.) She led her rounds of the neighborhood every morning - she was THE Alpha dog of the whole crew. She lifted her leg to mark each tree, and was spotted more than a mile away, on many occasions, with 5 or 6 other dogs trailing behind her!

She was a predator. She killed any animal that was smaller than she was, so all the cats in the neighborhood learned where all the trees were and climbed them quickly when she approached. The neighbors loved her - for a full ten years after her death, no one ever had woodchucks in their garden, that is how well she cleared them out of the woods that surrounded us. She only tackled a porcupine once though. After watching her, wedged between Dad's knees, while he and Grandpa carefully pulled quills out of her muzzle, I knew how bad porcupines could be - and so did she. She never attacked another ever again. Like I said, Sheba was smart.

Because she was marked like a Doberman, people thought she was vicious. Not so (unless you were a woodchuck) but it worked in our favor. If we kids were out in the yard by ourselves, Sheba stood guard over us. No stranger ever came more than halfway up the driveway (about leve with where our sandbox was). Sheba would bark once, then sit, dead-centered in the driveway. If they got "too close," she would growl, and they'd all run away! My mother once saw a salesperson walking backwards down the driveway, never taking his eyes off Sheba, when we kids weren't even outside, Sheba had just barked to come inside!

She was my best friend when my older siblings went to school, and always, actually. And when she died, when I was 12, the father who lived across the street, who had always said he "wasn't a dog person," cried as he wrapped Sheba's body in her favorite blanket, and when my Dad came home from work, they went together to bury her at my grandfather's farm.

Never will there be another dog as smart and as wise and as clever and as patient as my Sheba dog!