Little Boy Blu

He had one blue eye. That’s why we named him Blu. We wanted him to be a little unique so we spelled it differently.

I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how long we had him. Katie said he was 2 years old when we rescued him but he was well past the puppy stage. We think the vet put his age at 4. I remember Katie telling her dad she wanted a Border Collie. He told her if she could find one that was out of the puppy stage we could get it. She didn’t stop until she found a rescue that had an adult dog. I took her somewhere over towards Murray to pick him up. Katie seemed to think we got him in the 2010 era. We took this beautiful, black and white Border Collie out of a kennel, where he had spent his entire life and let him run on our 150 acre farm.

It seems as though he’s always been there. He started as an outside dog. All of our dogs have been outside dogs. But then one summer it turned hot or one winter it turned cold, and I decided he was going to be an inside/outside dog. He was always good in the house. He never really acted up. He did shed an awful lot, which if that’s the only drawback to having him in the house that was not to bad.

But if Jimmy started the tractor he’d come running. He’d be standing at the door, waiting. Oh, and he would go crazy if the Gator started up. He didn’t want to get in. He wanted to run. And run he did.

What was cool though was once you were in the field he would find a spot under a shade tree and hang out there until you went to the next field. As he got some age on him then he might get in the Gator for a minute but if you slowed down he was out of it running right behind you.

When we were moving cows we did have to keep him inside because he wasn’t trained to herd. He herded by instinct and he could separate cows with the best of them. Usually, though, it wasn’t the right cow. But if there were cars going by our road he took after to herd them. He would lie in the ditch and wait for a car to drive by. Everyone thought he was chasing cars but he wasn’t. He was herding. As a car would drive by he would jump out of the ditch and run after them until he realized that they were going where he wanted them to go. Then he would get back in the ditch. We would get calls all the time from concerned neighbors. We were sure he would get hit, but he never did.

He ruled the roost. He let the grandkids love on him. He loved it when John or Katie would get in the floor with him and play. He absolutely loved to be loved on. There were lots of times you had to tell him to go lay down because he wouldn’t quit pestering you. When another dog or cat entered our lies he would tolerate them but I don’t think he liked one or the other more. I think he saw them more as a nuisance since he had to share attention, food and water with them.

He did love food. He was never a begger but if food hit the ground it was his. If food was thrown out to the cats he knew exactly where it was thrown and he could get right in there and eat all that he wanted. We knew that he would stick his head into the dogfood bag and get all he wanted. We knew that he ran most of it off so it didn’t concern us. We got fussed at more than once by a vet who would tell us how overweight he was. That didn’t bother us. We were overweight. And if the vet asked how many treats he got and we refused to tell him he politely told us that each treat was like giving him a candy bar. We scaled way back and started measuring his food. Too bad we didn’t do that to ourselves.

Blu was a farm dog. He didn’t belong to anybody. He was just our dog. There were times when Katie decided to claim him. That was alright because we knew he was the farm dog. He loved John to death, and John loved him. Most of the time Jimmy was his favorite, especially when he was farming. I like to think he loved me most but I think I loved him more than any other dog we’ve ever had. And that’s saying something.

Blu didn’t like storms and if he was outside when a storm came up we would get a phone call from one of our neighbors. He would burrow himself under their house or under their porch. We’d have to go up there, pull him out and bring him home. There were times that he would put his head into my closet and stay right there until the storm passed. When the tornado hit in 2019 Blu and I got under the stairs. Jimmy decided since the tornado was going south that we needed to go north. We loaded Blu up in the truck and drove 3 miles north to wait out the storm. Fortunately, we were not hit at home or 3 miles to the north but others in our county didn’t fair as well.

When I would travel for work Blu knew that I was leaving. He would get real quiet and watch every trip I made out the door. But when I would come home he would meet me at the front door and run all around that I had come home and then start talking with me until I started rubbing all over him. If no one else knew that I had come home at least Blu did.

Sometimes we would refer to Blu as our miracle dog. The first time we took him to the vet we found out that he had heart worms. They wanted to treat him. Jimmy asked the vet, “how long can he live with them?” The vet told him he saw dogs die right away and then others live a long life. We chose not to treat him. Every time he went to the vet they would tell us that he was heart worms positive. We would say that we knew, and no we were not going to treat him. So, he’s been around forever and on his last visit to the vet they ran the test and came back that he was not heart worms positive. We argued that of course he was. They said no, not at all. I don’t know who was right but I do know he did not die of heart worms.

Blu woke up over the weekend with a seizure or something. I got up with him thinking maybe he was having a dream. There have been times that he would run through his dreams. But that wasn’t it. He was sick. I immediately googled his symptoms and it seemed as though he might have had a stroke. There were a couple of other things it could have been but he was not steady on his feet and his head stayed tilted to one side. We watched him, we loved on him, we talked with people who knew vet medicine. By Monday morning our decision was made. We could not take care of Blu the way he needed to be, he was 16 years old, and he was having a very hard time getting around even on his best days.

Even though Blu was only an old farm dog he was the best dog I’ve ever known and there will never be one to replace him.