A rough start

A mutt, he had the coloring of a Rottweiler and the body of a Pitbull. Apparently, that was the wrong combination. The oddball amongst his siblings, the Pitbull papa pushed and growled and snapped to keep him from feeding along with his brothers. The mechanic who owned the shop where he was born ignored them.

Wandering while repairs were being made one day, my husband happenend upon him cowering in a corner of the garage, a silent ball of fur, covered in oil. I suspect he named him in that moment. He was forever after Kara, black in Turkish. He wrapped him in some towels, put him in the backseat of his car and took him home.

On the way, Kara got motion sickness and vomited.

Oil.

By the time I got home from work, my husband had both scrubbed his car and bathed Kara multiple times. I came upon him walking home from introducing Kara to our neighbors. After parking my car in the garage, I went out to meet him.

"Ooooh, whose puppy is that?" I said from a non-petting distance in my baby-puppy voice.

"Ours," he said hesitantly

"What?" I said, in the same way someone else might have said are you out of your *bleep*ing mind?

"I couldn't leave him!" he said, and then proceeded to tell me Kara's story.

"Rescuing him doesn't mean he has to be ours. There are shelters."

"We can't send him to a shelter. Anka and I love him already."

"Great! You have a beautiful heart. But that heart won't feed the dog. Walk the dog. Clean the dog. Scoop poop. So, who do you think will end up doing all that?"

"I'll take care of him!"

"You don't even take out the garbage! So it will be another responsibility for ME! Oh, but wait, who has I-can't-breathe-get-me-an-inhaler-now allergies to dogs?"

"Sweetheart..."

I pivoted, steaming, stomping, slamming the door behind me as I went into the house to make dinner.

Yeah, well, needless to say, Kara stayed.

Kara was the most adorable puppy in the world who tried to bury bones in the marble floor of my breezeway (the scratch marks in one corner remain). I still have the artificial plant where he buried another.

He grew to be super smart and quiet and loving and protective. He wouldn't hurt a fly-I made my husband promise he wouldn't be violent like the stories I'd heard of Pitbulls and Rotweillers, and he wasn't. I once had a man come to get rid of bees for me and Kara was following us around the garden. The man never noticed until he turned around and then he nearly jumped out of his skin. Kara did look scary, but he just sat, his tail swishing under him, waiting to be pet.

"Some watch dog," he said.

The only person Kara ever barked at (until he got old and senile and barked at ants), was a contractor. The contractor ended up disappearing mid-job with a lot of our money. Grrrrr.... Kara was an excellent judge of character.

My favorite memory is watching Kara from the kitchen window. When he headed to the back corner of the garden, I knew within minutes a bus would pull up on the main road. A few minutes after that, Kara's tail would begin a wild wagging and then he would prance toward the front yard, matching the pace of my husband on the street, our neighbor's house between them.

"Oğul [Turkish for son]," my husband would call as he turned the corner into our street. Kara would jump on his dog house and over the gate into the front yard out of my sight. But I knew what I would see: My husband on his knees, hugging his buddy and getting all kinds of happy dog kisses.

Kara was a part of our family for ten wonderful years. All our hearts broke when he left us.