the first known picture of sage (why she's in a recycling bin i don't know but yay for me for recycling in 1992)...
i adopted sage in the fall of 1992. kody and i had spent 4 years together, i was out of college and my life was more settled so i decided it was time for kody to have a sibling.
her vital stats:
- her story: one saturday i went to the newark humane society and there was one litter of puppies, probably cocker mixes, and i picked sage out immediately. a very short time after adopting her she broke with distemper which mainly manifested in a neurologic tic in one of her back legs. i went to several vets before i found one who didn’t tell me to put her to sleep. unfortunately no treatments were effective in stopping the tic but other than that and her teeth being damaged she had no other ramifications from the distemper and lived a long, goofy and maniacal life.
- her nicknames: ms. s (for whatever reason) was her most oft used moniker. i can only guess the formality was to somehow distill her completely informal and imp-like nature.
- her nemesis: sage had two things she disliked with a vengeance; cans of pledge and garcia. her relationship with pledge was totally my fault – when she was a puppy i dropped a can right in front of her and it scared her so badly that for the rest of her life that orange can was the devil incarnate to her. her relationship with gar was of their own making…they just did not ever see eye to eye (actually sage’s eye often saw the inside of gar’s mouth).
- her loves: of course i have to mention myself, dave and kody but beyond us sage had a barney-like plastic toy that i bought her when she was a puppy and she loved that thing her entire life. to this day i have not had the heart to get rid of it…
- little known fact: when dave and i got married in 1994 our wedding present from my parents was them paying the vet bill for sage’s leg amputation. the tic was constant and her muscle had completely atrophied so the leg was really just dead weight for her – once it was removed she was unstoppable. we made an odd family at that time – two dogs both with 3 legs (i realize that statement is a bit insane as we’re certainly not an un-odd family now).
we’ve had some quirky dogs in our life but out of all them i think sage will go down in infamy as the strangest bird ever. she was delightfully goofy and loving but also could be a loose cannon and none of the other dogs really knew what she was capable of. maybe that’s a cocker thing – sometimes zig reminds me so much of sage i think she’s been reincarnated.
this is my very favorite picture of kody & sage taken shortly before we lost sage at age 10...
