Susie and I got married in August 1971.

For Christmas that year, I bought her a puppy.

Having been raised with dogs (and many other critters), it was lonely in the house without a pet.

I went to the pet store at 10th Street and Scatterfield Road in Anderson and purchased a registered American Eskimo. It was small and all white except for a black nose and eyes. We named her Frosti Lady.

She was a great family dog. She didn’t like outsiders, though.

When our daughter, Angi, was born, Frosti would not let anyone except us near the crib.

This upset the grandparents when they had to wait for us to remove the guardian before they could see the baby.

This even continued when Angi was a teenager and brought boyfriends to the house. The dog wouldn’t let anyone near her. (I thought that was great!)

We had Frosti back in the blizzard of ’78. She would play in the yard and dig caves into large snow drifts.

Then, she would hide in the cave.

Like Arctic foxes and polar bears, she would cover her black nose with her paws so all that showed to possible prey was the black eyes.

When we walked by, she would explode out of her hiding place and attack.

Being an Eskimo, she loved the snow.

Frosti was a great pet and friend for 15 years. Then, she began having seizures. Medication helped for a while, but her condition became worse.

She still ran and played like a pup and had no other health issues. We finally had to have her euthanized. It wasn’t long before the house became lonely.

We began looking for another dog. I found an ad in the Anderson paper advertising American Eskimo puppies for sale. The breenders were northwest of Noblesville on State Road 47. We called and asked if they had a female for sale. When they said “Yes,” we headed that way.

The location was an old farmhouse with a barn in back. It was a pig farm.

The pure white puppies were running in the hog lot with the pigs.

The farmer caught the female and brought her to us. Instead of just the nose and eyes being black, the whole dog was black. We put her in a large box in the truck and drove her straight to the vet. I told them to bathe her, worm her, de-flea her, get the burrs out of her hair and give her a bath.

This was before we even took her home.

We named her Fluffy Lady.

She was different from Frosti. She loved everyone. She didn’t like rain and hated snow.

She did like mud!

Being raised by pigs her first two months, Fluffy didn’t know how to bark.

It took the neighbor dog about three months to teach her that noise.

She did know how to oink and continued oinking until her death.

She also would root in the mud like a pig until her nose was bloody.

Fluffy had cancer when she was 15. We had the operation to remove the problem, but less than a year later it returned and we had to have her put down.

It wasn’t long before the house became lonely again.

I looked around and found some Eskimo puppies for sale north of Lafayette.

While Susie was working, I drove there to buy one. The dogs also were on a farm but were housed in a clean barn and well cared for.

I bought the last female and took her home.

Friski Lady was waiting when Susie got home from work.

Like our first dog, she didn’t mind rain, and she loved playing in the snow. (She hated getting a bath, though, and when finished, she would be white again, and I would be red from the blood on my hands.)

Like our others, she was very intelligent, housebroken almost immediately, and like Fluffy, she liked attention. Friski loved to go camping in the motorhome, but she never completely overcame her car sickness.

We never took her on our travels for my writing business. We boarded her.

We took a supply of her food and water when leaving her. She didn’t like their food and wouldn’t drink their water. We found after our first dog wouldn’t drink their water, we had to take well water from home. None of our dogs would drink city water. I don’t know if that tells you something, or not.

Friski was 16, still running, chasing squirrels, eating and drinking well, with no arthritis. She had a severe dizzy spell and we took her to the emergency vet clinic. They diagnosed vertigo (just a couple weeks after I had the same problem), gave her medication and sent her home. She never completely overcame that.

One night, she started having dizzy spells again. They weren’t severe, so we figured we would wait and take her to the vet in the morning. She lay on the bare floor in front of the door, her favorite spot. I could tell she wasn’t feeling well. I spent the night in the living room with her, getting down on the floor several times with her, petting and talking to her. Her breathing was rapid, then very slow.

I realized she was in bad shape.

My wife came out about five o’clock in the morning. I had fallen asleep in my chair. She told me she thought Friski was gone. She had just gone to sleep and didn’t wake up.

We decided we were too old to start with another puppy — all the housebreaking, obedience training and everything else a baby needs.

After a couple months, we finished our 20th anniversary Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation fundraiser, and things slowed down. My surgeon called and said a kidney surgery was postponed or possibly canceled for at least a year. We started looking for another puppy.

American Eskimo puppies are hard to find. The computer showed lots of them in California, Pennsylvania and other distant states. We found some in southern Michigan and some in northeastern Indiana. These were close enough, but they wanted $1,500.

We finally found a male near Columbus much cheaper. We called and asked when we could come get him.

Oso Blanco (Spanish for “White Bear”) was his new name. Susie and I take turns sleeping for a few hours in the living room where we keep his crate. When he whines, we immediately take him outside to potty. He still has an occasional accident in the house, and we have to tell him “no” when he finds something to chew, but he is a fast learner.

Susie and I are exhausted but hope this lasts only a couple more days.

Our friends asked us why we would take on a new puppy at our advanced age.

I guess it’s just because our house was too lonely.

The author may be reached at [email protected].