Early Monday George sent this around to the members of WOOFD2 (Washington Owners of Flying Disc Dogs):
Gang,After a very short illness, 24 hours, tail flappin' Babe died in her sleep around 3:00 this morning. My only regret is I wasn't half the trainer as she was an athlete.She will be sorely missed.Bye Babe."Babe I Love You".....George
You might have seen her on the news. Or ESPN or Animal Planet. Babe was a founding dog of WOOFD2 and along with the others, she was a star. She competed all around Western Washington, in Denver, Atlanta.. You may have seen her performing at football halftime shows, state and county fairs, pet expos and state festivals including those in Calgary, Alberta and Kelowna, British Columbia, and some years at the Ski and Snowboard Festival in Whistler B.C. where she shared a stage with the Blackeyed Peas and Justin Timberlake. She earned money for most of these performances, losing her amateur status early. George and I strutted behind her into each gig, saying as if we were way cool, "We're with the frisbee dogs". We were Babe's roadies.
She had no tail, reallly. Just a little nub with a tuft of white fur at the tip. Babe never ever learned how to wag correctly. She flapped her little tail up and down, up and down. We always said someday we'd send her to remedial wagging class.
She had been moving slow and had some digestive difficulties but we assumed that was due to her age and maybe some arthritis. I had written her birthday post just a few days ago. She was sick Sunday night but certainly nothing we ever for a minute though might lead to her death. But it did. She died in her sleep, at George's bedside. Babe rarely left George's side and if he couldn't take her to the office or the ski condo due to his long Ski Patrol schedule, she waited in his chair and was the first one at the door when he arrived home, flapping her tail with delight.
We were grieving because on Wednesday old Duke had died. But that was bittersweet, more a celebration of his long life, an affirmation of the last loving thing we could do in giving him a good death. But Babe was only 11 -- only 11 -- and we never ever for one minute thought we would not have years and years with her. There was no warning, no way to make sense of it. I've been seeing the world through tear-filled eyes; my heart physically aches. I forget for a nanosecond, turn to say "Heads up, Babe" and toss her a treat which she never ever missed no matter how fast it went. And she isn't here. She will never again be here. It's hard to get our mind around it.
We got Babe when she was about 12 weeks old. She was born in a barn at a thoroughbred horse farm. They called her Annabelle and she was a little fuzzy wigglebutt puppy who came barreling out of the stall where she and her brother were with their mom Duchess. Duchess was a red heeler, shy and spooky, almost feral. She was a rescue and the people said she had come from a background of neglect. They didn't know she was in season and the pregnancy was unanticipated. The dad, Bandit, was a flat-out gorgeous blue merle Australian shepherd, a conformation champion apparently related to the crowned heads of Europe. The farm hands were proud of Bandit's jumping ability, showing us how he could LEAP to the top of the stacked hay bales. We didn't know then how important that inherited jumping gene would be in the little pup's life.
After a few days, we named little Annabelle Babe, after Babe Didrickson Zaharias, because I wanted an agility dog and George knew she would be a great athlete. What Babe really wanted to do in agility was leap off the teeter totter and fly higher and higher -- a disqualifying action in agility but worth half a point in disc dog competitoin. Which we had never heard of.
I had put a lot of time into training Babe and exposing her to different situations. One weekend my grandchildren Aaron and Natasha were visiting and we thought we'd take Babe on an articulated bus to Seattle Center. There was some hoopla and commotion and a bunch of dogs and handlers milling around chasing frisbees. Babe, usually so well behaved, began to whine and pull at the leash. I bought her a frisbee, tossed it a few feet out -- and she jumped as high as my head and caught it. Some of the frisbee competitors said Whoa. I just blinked. Babe was so crazed about that frisbee I had to hide it under my shirt so we could go home.
"George," I said, "You should see what Babe can do. She can jump and catch a frisbee..." He said, "Yeah...?" So I showed him. And he blinked. We had no idea at all that there was a sport of this. The first time we took Babe to a competition they opened registration and everybody sort of hung back and George, ever confident, signed in first. "Where's your music?" the registrar asked. "Duh...Music?" we said, like stooges. It was a freestyle competition and Babe and George went first. Not knowing what freestyle was, George tossed the disc around and Babe flew and boinged and caught it. She scored pretty well, considering that freestyle disc competition really involves choreographed moves to music, as we discovered when the second competition team performed. That was the day we met Swanee, who came trotting up talking a mile a minute, He became one of our best friends. Competing in the sport with his amazing border collie Katie, Swanee is an elder in the sport -- he held titles including world champion. From then on Babe and George were a team; she was his dog, heart and soul.
There is more to say. I will make a Part Two.
At the intersection of Taliban and NOW, Mohammad and Betty Freidan are weirdly entwined by a 21st Century fashion edict.
