Maggie's Farm

Strange coincidence. Late last night I stumbled across some of Wegman's videos. Here's a fast-action one:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j6afbl--ze8

Grew up with Wilma the Weimaraner and then Longshot Silver Shell as family dogs. Sweet, brilliant companions with us, very protective against others. Am tempted to get one but might go with a pound puppy, instead, just on principle. Or, nothing wrong with both is there?

Wilhelmina/Wilma was a motherly, loving soul toward especially us kids, but she wasn’t beyond suffering jealousy if our attentions were diverted to others. Once, M & D rented a sheep to bring to our city home and yard so that we children could see what animals other than dogs, cats and hamsters looked like. “Ewe” was indeed wooly as advertised and a little dumb, but compliant enough to let us collar and leash her for walks around the city blocks, which always attracted long retinues of kids. Poor Wilma became distraught. When we weren’t looking, Wilma would chase Ewe into the fence and bloody her nose. When we were looking, Wilma would start eating grass, because anything Ewe could do, she could do better--

No pedigree, just love: “A Soldier’s Best Friend” (from Texas Aggie Magazine)

Last year I got to be part of a very special reunion between a dog and a man. The man happens to be my brother, Tim Jones '04, and the dog is the puppy he rescued while serving in Iraq more than two years ago.

What happened was this: Tim rescued a puppy from the back of a gravel truck that was going into Camp Victory in Baghdad, Iraq. The puppy was approximately eight weeks old. Tim smuggled this puppy into his barracks and kept him for several weeks. Before the base was to be closed down to in-and-out traffic, Tim managed to get this puppy to the Baghdad Zoo for safekeeping.

On our end in the United States, we were frantically contacting anyone and everyone we could think of to try to get this puppy into the country… Military Mascots has been our saving grace and without their organization, we wouldn't have gotten Hadji here.

Fast-forward 16 months and Hadji had finally made his way into the United States. After a really long flight from Jordan to New York (amongst customs battles) and then to Dallas, he finally made it in late on a Tuesday evening...What we got is a really skinny but sweet dog... we loved him and he loved us back immediately. It's amazing that trust came so easily to him after what he has lived through in his life…

The reunion with Tim was one of the sweetest moments I have ever witnessed. Tim walked in the front door and started talking to Hadji. Hadji approached him like he had everything else so far—interested but not afraid. As Hadji got closer to Tim, his tail started thumping and he started jumping up. He remembered the soldier that had saved him! There was laughter and smiles all around as dog and man were reunited.

We aren't out of the woods yet. Hadji will be thoroughly examined and tested by the vet, but we are hopeful that he is healthy. Hadji is learning all sorts of new things now... English, what grass is, love, etc. He is a very lucky dog that someone rescued him out of that truck, and we are lucky to finally have him in our lives.

(by A. Jones)