Sophie, Dog Overboard : The Incredible True Adventures of the Castaway Dog (4 page)

Jenko agreed to do the deed, knowing that Jan wouldn't be asking if the Griffiths didn't really need him. He was attached to Jordy but had also had a lifetime of dealing with the highs and lows of keeping dogs, having been raised with working dogs as pets.

“I felt a little treacherous, taking my best mate's dog to be put down, but we all knew this was the only thing any of us could do to help Jordy,” says Jenko.

While Bridget was at school and Jan and Dave at work, Jenko came to the house and calmly walked the very frail Jordy to the vet's clinic, a half mile down the road. It took them half an hour to get there but her last half hour was full of sun and fresh air.

When Dave came home later that afternoon, there was no Jordy sleeping in her bed. He walked up the stairs to the kitchen and said to Jan, “You've taken her, haven't you?”

Jan nodded and went to Dave, put her hands on his cheeks and gave him a kiss on the lips. He nodded and rubbed her shoulders.

Jan spoke with the vet later that afternoon, who assured her that Jordy had been asleep and beyond pain when she'd gone. “Do you want the body?” the vet asked her. Jan answered with a categorical no. The Griffiths did not want to bury Jordy in the backyard. She would live on in their memories and stories.

Not for the first time, the Griffiths pulled together to deal with their sadness. Bridget didn't mention Jordy to Jan when she got home from school. She'd been waiting for it to happen any day now. Puppy Sophie had greeted her at the gate and Bridget rolled around with her outside in the garden for comfort. Later, Luke knew immediately that Jordy was gone when he came through the gate for his daily visit. Jordy wasn't in her hole or her bed. Luke bolted up the stairs but stopped before opening the screen door. His eyes were glazed when he stepped inside. “She's gone, isn't
she?” he said to Jan, who nodded, just as she had with Dave. Luke let out a big sigh. It would be several days before he came to visit again.

Jan and Dave, who had a lot of practice in helping each other cope with grief, tried to be stoical. They had always loved their dogs, but they were not sentimental. A dog was part of the family, but owning pets meant that you had to cope with their loss. Jordy had enjoyed a long and vigorous life and given the whole family a lot of hilarious and joyful moments, but as Dave says, “What were we going to do? Dig a hole in the garden so that everyone could stand around crying? It's too hard. She was an old dog and she was in pain and we couldn't let her carry on. It was time to let her go.”

Sophie also immediately noticed that Jordy had gone. Over several days, she searched for her old mentor, sniffing tentatively around Jordy's backyard hole and looking questioningly up at Bridget and Jan when they came through the gate. Owners and dog comforted each other. The whole family were grateful that they had Sophie to lavish their attention and affection on, and in fact, the still gangly pup very quickly benefitted from her sister's passing. She was the perfect distraction from the family's sadness and she wasn't going to protest.

It took less than a week for Sophie's energy levels to rise. She was being smothered with love from everyone, including Luke, and so she came to not only accept, but relish her change in status. Now, when Dave or Bridget
got the garden hose out, Sophie behaved like the top dog she was in the house. She began to show her true athletic ability. She also became quite the entertainer. As Dave or Bridget unwound the hose, Sophie would start wiggling her behind madly and sniffing along the ground towards the water as if she were creeping up on an unsuspecting cockroach. When Dave raised the hose, the pup would bound over, jumping in and away from the water and snapping at it wildly as if she were playing “you can't catch me” with a wily snake. The game was just as addictive for the family as it was for Sophie, and when any of the other kids were home, they'd stand around happily watching and commenting as Sophie snapped away at the water, Dave whipping the hose around for more time than might have been strictly necessary.

The Griffiths realized that Sophie, unlike Jordy, was a sucker for water. In Jordy's prime, Dave only had to grab the hose and Jordy was out of there. Jan would look out the kitchen window and spot her, curled in the hole behind the Brazilian cherry with her head resting over the edge. She could stay there for hours, even long after Dave had put the hose away. Anything to avoid the water.

But Sophie promised to be a water dog right from her early days. Even at two months old, she took to the hose with no prompting and provided hours of pride-provoking entertainment for the Griffiths. Her fascination with snapping at the stream, while an endearing
enthusiasm, didn't quite extend to the swimming pool, though. Luke never tried to throw Sophie in, the way he had with Jordy, but she would always be anxious when the family was in the pool. She'd run around the red decking, occasionally barking, watching every move. She could camp by the edge of the pool for hours, standing then sitting then lying, while Bridget and her friends messed around in there. They'd throw her the tennis ball or splash her, or Bridget would swim to the edge for a kiss and Sophie would put her nose to Bridget's and lick her gently. All the while, Sophie would quietly guard. She appeared to have one eye on the action at all times. Bridget felt as though her cuddly pup was ready to jump in at the first sign of any trouble. Her whole attitude expressed,
hey, be careful in there
.

As her personality emerged, Sophie's tenderness won the Griffiths over. Gradually their suspicion that the newest addition to the family was less than intelligent gave way to an admiration for this creature who had poise and self-confidence and didn't feel the need to insist upon attention. She would never nip at anyone's heels or jump without warning onto someone's lap if nobody was talking to her while they ate dinner. She'd never bark in desperation when she wanted to play a game or be picked up and yet she was always up for a snuggle. While Jordy had always been on alert, ready to snap if someone got too close when she wasn't prepared, or barking even if she'd met the visitor walking into the driveway hundreds of times before, Sophie would always
submit herself when her friends or family summoned her over to give her love. When the family sat around the dinner table or visitors gathered around the pool, she'd trot over with her head down a little and place her nose on someone's knee. She would sit like a kangaroo, her back legs bent at right angles and splayed outwards so that her whole bottom flattened on the ground.

Although she would regard strangers with caution for an initial period, she was always more concerned with hugs and pats and company than with showing her working-dog brawn. She was at once more placid and more stubborn than most cattle dogs, who are bred to respect their master as well as to work independently.

People talk about people or animals with old souls: the family believes Sophie is an old soul. She seems to come from a different era, one when women wore gloves and learned about etiquette and dogs knew how to maintain their own dignity.

S
ophie's elegance just made Bridget want to show her new charge off even more. Every Tuesday night, she would take Sophie to puppy preschool and then to basketball. Bridget played at both city and state level, and Sophie attended most of her games. Bridget's coach would roll her eyes in mock exasperation, but every now and then Bridget would take a sneaky look over and see the coach cooing at and patting Sophie. The pup's place was on a bench beside the court where she would sit calmly and watch the game. She'd turn her head from side to side to follow the ball, or Bridget, up and down the court. Sometimes she'd trot back and forth along the bench as the action became louder. When Bridget had time off the court for the
team huddle, her face sweaty and head still in the game, Sophie wouldn't race over for attention. She'd lie on her bench, her eyes moving around the room, and sometimes lift her head to look over at the sidelined players, but ultimately give Bridget her space.

During the day, when Bridget had errands to run in one of her parents' cars, Sophie would jump into the front seat of Dave's red Honda or Jan's silver Nissan to accompany Bridget. Sometimes they'd sneak off, partners in crime, to go to the beach for a vigorous game of tennis ball, Sophie having learned the joys of fetch after her initial fumbling attempts before she was strong enough to actually clench the ball in her jaw. Bridget and Sophie would run into the ocean, the girl diving under waves and the dog swimming out and then back in, her head above the water and mouth pressed firmly shut, determination and deep pleasure in her eyes. As Sophie grew to maturity and gained in confidence, these beach trips became one of her favorite activities. Sophie was not just a willing but an eager swimmer, and would rush into the water on her own after a game of ball, like an athlete washing off after a hard dose of training.

On the way home, Bridget might zip into a shop's parking lot, put the windows down and leave Sophie standing up and sticking her head out the window, surveying the scene while Bridget picked up the dry-cleaning or some last-minute things that Jan needed to cook dinner. When the pup saw Bridget returning, she'd stand to attention, tail wagging, hips swishing.
“She'd jump into the driver's seat as if to say, ‘Welcome back. Where we going now?'” recalls Bridget.

Unlike Jordy, who had spent many hours driving around town with Luke in his metallic green 1971 Volkswagen Beetle, growling at anyone but family who came near the car, Sophie wouldn't grumble or hiss at Bridget's friends. There wasn't an aggressive bone in Sophie's body, but that didn't mean she was a pushover. “She would never bite anyone but you always knew that she would protect you,” says Bridget. From early on, Sophie had a gentle authority. She did not threaten by growling or nipping, but when they were out and about, or at home with visitors, she always stood close to Bridget, and usually between her and whoever else was around. Her head would drop low and she'd look ahead, her eyes almost sleepy, but one move from the visitors and she'd fix her attention on them. It was more a vibe than an action. “Her first instinct was always to be kind and friendly,” says Bridget.

Sophie was also sociable and a bit of a flirt, inclined to linger when people stopped to admire her on her walks around the neighborhood with Bridget. “It would take an extra fifteen or twenty minutes to do the same walk I used to do with Jordy, because she would want to stop and wag her tail at everyone walking past.”

Her combination of composure and charming giddiness earned Sophie a nickname that slowly and naturally took hold. “Sophie Tucker” emerged partly in homage to Sophie's vaudevillian namesake, but
even more fundamentally because, in the great Aussie tradition, nicknames are rife throughout the Griffith family. It was no surprise that Sophie, too, began to acquire variations on her given name. Jan never knew Dave's real name for the first few months into their courtship—he was simply Griff or Griffo. Luke rarely answers to his own name, as for most of his life he's been called anything but: Lukey, Spooky, G-riff. Jan is Janny, Ellen is Nell and Bridget responds to several, Gitte being Jan's pet name for her, after Brigitte. Matthew is the only one with the obvious—Matty.

So Sophie became Tuck, Sophie Tucker, Soph. When Sophie was galloping along the beach, Bridget would call out, “Sophie Tucker!” which somehow expressed her delight in her pet's character more fully than just “Sophie!” And Dave and Luke became especially fond of Tuck and Tucker. “Tuck” gave her street cred. Like her namesake, she was a lady with attitude. The nickname seemed to encompass all elements of her increasingly infectious disposition. Sophie spoke for her poise, Tucker her boyish energy, and the combination said it all.

When Bridget had her friends over, Sophie was always welcome. There were lots of after-school, spontaneous hangout sessions and then there were parties—meticulously planned costume affairs that usually took place in the barbeque area under the house and centered around the pool. The Griffith home was
always the go-to party house, which was the way Dave and Jan liked it, so they could keep an eye on things.

As Bridget and her girlfriends lounged in bikinis or decadent headwear in honor of the latest fancy dress theme, and her mates in board shorts told louder and louder stories, Sophie would often don a party hat and sit on Bridget's lap looking gorgeous. Bridget's friends couldn't help but adore her, and the youngest Griffith didn't have to look far for affirmation that her bias towards her own pet was legitimate. The two of them would bask in the glory of being the center of attention. They were a super cute double-act and they knew it.

Despite Sophie's conversion into a dedicated sea-swimmer, she never got over her mistrust of the pool. If people were swimming, Sophie would always be up for a game, but she spent most of her time running as if on tiptoe around the edge of the pool, panting and smiling, occasionally barking when someone dived in or showed any sign of throwing her the tennis ball. If Luke was over, he would lure Sophie onto the top step, assuring her that this was just like the water that she swam in at the beach. She'd step down, ears back but with the tip of her tail wagging, and she'd sit there, legs and bottom submerged in water, while Luke played water bombs with his hands, splashing her affectionately as she licked at the spray. Occasionally she'd allow Bridget to pull her in for a quick lap, but ultimately, she preferred being on the sidelines waiting for a game of tennis ball. While she
loved the ocean, she seemed, like many dogs, to be spooked by the enclosed water of a swimming pool.