Lilly

Lilly was my first dog that I got during college.  I was at ECU and had finally moved into a place that I could have dogs.  I wanted to stay away from the typical dogs of college students and in our area those were Pit Bulls or Pitt Bull/Lab mutts.  Now let me start off by saying I have nothing against dogs, and after meeting my cousin’s Pittbull, Tank, I don’t really have that much against Pittbulls. But lets be honest, they have statistical numbers that wouldn’t agree with them being the best breed in the world.  Despite these common place conceptions and statistical data against the breed, every dumb blonde ECU girl falls in love with their cute little faces when they are a puppy or the idea that their equally as brain dead boyfriend driving around in a lifted Chevy 2500 with 22″ rims would love the companionship of said breed.  We all know what happens.  The girl gets tired of the dog because it got big, the boyfriend really never wanted anything to do with the dog because he didn’t pick it out, they break up, the dog goes to the pound, loses it’s mind being crammed into the small space, some ghetto thug or white trash Eminem wanna be comes and buys it, turning it into the horrible awful dogs we have all grown to hate.

After researching dog breeds for the best apartment dog, calm demeanor, playful with dogs and children, and overall healthiness, I arrived at the basset hound.  I saved my money up from working a job, made sure my bills could handle the food, vets bills and general cost increase, found a breeder and went to see them.  In all honesty I wanted a male, something fat and lazy. A “Netflix & Chill” dog if you will.  What I would find instead was a small, timid, not overweight, healthy female, but to say it wasn’t love at first sight, would be a lie.  It was her or 2 of her sisters and I knew exactly which one I had to have.  My best friend Sam went with me to pick her up as I thought it would be best for her to be held on the way home instead of sitting in the bed of my truck, scared and lonely after being ripped from her family.  She cried the whole way home.

Lilly would live with me in my apartment for several months, sleeping on my shoes, accompanying me to work and around town, peeing on my head while I was asleep and being a great dog.  Then came the time for me to deploy.  Lilly went to live with my parents on a summer camp and conference center they ran just outside of Fayetteville, NC.  When I got home I found out that my sister, who was still living at home at the time, had also, on the same day bought a male Basset Hound named Oliver.  Awesome, Lilly is going to have a play mate.

I left for Iraq, and after almost 2 years of being gone came home to Lilly.  Like I had only been gone for a matter of minutes Lilly ran to me and greeted me as usual.  Lots of jumping and licking.  I had missed my girl and she had grown up.  This trip actually is the well refined and more planned out version of a trip that I had planned for Lilly and myself to take when I had returned home.  Finances and the Army didn’t allow for that, so i ended up hiking a section of the Appalachian trail with the same guy who went with me to pick Lilly up, Sam.

Not long after hiking the trail, I decided to head back to school to try and finish my degree. I had already met Rachel at this point and we planned to move into a house in Greenville, NC and she would transfer to ECU.  While I was house/apartment hunting I noticed Lilly had put on some weight and was getting fatter.  I eventually found a house and moved in not long afterwards to start painting and working on things while Rachel finished her last semester at Lenoir-Rhyne.  Then I get that phone call from my mom.  Lilly has had Oliver’s babies and I had 9 basset hound puppies.  So, with the puppies being 2 days old, I met Rachel at my parents house and we loaded them all up and moved them to Greenville. I had set up a room all for Lilly and the puppies.

Lilly was a great mom, let all of them nurse when they wanted, cleaned them all the time and would only take breaks long enough to go eat and use the bathroom.  She let me play with them, clean them, hold them and never growled at my presence.  We eventually sold or gave away 8 of the puppies to good families around Greenville.  One even became the Mascot for a city’s Chamber of Commerce.

The one we kept, a male, tri-color like Lilly, the largest of them all, his name was Gus.