Woodie was the oldest puppy we'd ever gotten. She was 12-weeks-old when we picked her up.      We'd contacted a little old lady, named Mrs. Gallagher, in St. Louis, who had a wheaton for sale. Or, Mary Ann contacted her. Mary Ann had tracked her down through numerous calls and references. At that time, finding a wheaton-colored Scottie was nearly impossible. A wheaton-colored Scottie had just won best in show at Westminster and demand was high while the stock was low.      Mrs. Gallagher said that another couple had inquired about the pup, but were unsure and had not called back when they said they would. We said we were sure that we wanted her, so Mrs. G. said we could have her. As mentioned on the Test Subjects splash page, Mrs. G. hesitated when we said we wanted to name her Woodie, until we explained that she'd be named after the British dog trainer, Barbara Woodhouse.      When we got Woodie, Mrs. G. sent along AKC papers – which we've always ignored – with a note stating that we should consider naming the dog Tiffany or Amber. Yeah, like we'd ever have a dog with such foolish names.

It was amazing how well-trained Woodie was when we got her. There was very little trauma – on both her part and ours – training her to do her dirty, sinful business outside.      What was traumatic was Woodie's establishing her place in the pack order as far as Ollie went. Early in her youth, we'd set up Woodie's kennel across the living room. We'd place Woodie in it to get her used to it. She could see us and know we'd let her out in a few minutes. After we let her out, we'd keep the door open so she could go in and out on her own.      She developed a game with Ollie. She'd go up to Ollie, play a dominance game, and then scamper back into her kennel or under a bent-wood rocker in the living room. At some point, while we were otherwise occupied, Woodie had pressed Ollie past the point of no return. We heard a "yipe!" and the scrambling of dog feet on the hardwood floor.      When we got into the living room, we found Woodie cowering under the rocker, some drops of blood on the floor, and Ollie walking around like she owned the place. At the expense of a punctured lip, Woodie had learned her place in the pack order.     It cost us a trip the emergency vet and Woodie got half of her beard shaved off.

Both Woodie and Ollie were mad for balls and balloons. Ollie would find the knot at the base of a balloon or tetherball, grab it, shake it, and run around the house with it.      Woodie, on the other hand, felt it her job in life to destroy every round, inflated object of which she could lay hold. She even punctured a leather soccer ball several times.      No, she isn't suspended from my belt in this picture. I'm inflating a balloon and Woodie is levitating three times her body height above the ground in order to snatch at it. Notice Ollie is patiently waiting for its proper release.

This is the Giant Woodie picture. I was trying to get a nice picture of her in the back yard and through focal length and f-stop, ended up with somewhat of a forced-perspective image of her. She looks like she would just barely fit inside of one of the garage doors.      In reality, Woodie was one of the largest Scottie's we'd owned. Her weight ranged from 22 to 25 pounds, although 25 was her upper limit. That' pretty large for a female Scottie. We thought she was a big terrier until we brought home Picard.

Woodie was an alpinist of comfort. There was never a stack of pillows that she wouldn't scale in order to lay upon them.      This sometimes had disastrous results. There was more than once when she settled herself on a pile of pillows only to take a tumble off of them, usually onto the hardwood floor. She was never hurt, only upset by the betrayal of her resting spot.

This is  our favorite picture of Woodie, probably taken after Ollie's death. No, she wasn't happy that Ollie was gone.      The picture is taken on my brother's back deck during a summer party. Yes, we know she probably looks "happy" because she's hot and is panting. But, she did love to be around people and if ever there was an outward demonstration of her inner emotion, this was probably it.

After getting her lip punctured, Woodie knew that Ollie was boss. She also learned from Ollie that chairs were much more comfortable than floors. Ollie laid claim to the rattan chair in the sunroom while Woodie found comfort in the chair's ottoman. She was just the right size to completely cover it when she was all curled up.

For one of our anniversaries, Mary Ann's mother paid for an oriental rug for our living room. Our first choice was a powder blue Asian weave. Woodie fell in love with it. No sooner had we rolled it out than she laid on it and claimed it for her own. Too bad it clashed with everything else in the room. We took it back and exchanged it for a gray one. Woodie was severely disappointed with our choice. Although she liked to lay on the replacement, she was never as happy on it as she'd been with the blue one.

When we got Picard, we tried hard to keep Woodie as the dominant dog. But, by then Woodie was 11 years old and Picard, as a puppy, was larger and outweighed Woodie. Woodie succumbed to the inevitable and let Picard displace her in the pecking order. However, that didn't mean Woodie was submissive. Here, we're all playing with a Wiggly Giggly Ball. Remember how I mentioned that Woodie considered her job in life to destroy all round objects? Well, once she was wound up in attacking a ball, she took no guff from Picard. Here she's put Picard in her place as to who would have the satisfaction of killing The Ball.

Although Woodie and Pi had their dominance ordeals, they soon learned to tolerate each other. I suppose "friendship" is something foreign to dogs, but they did develop feelings toward each other.

Woodie used to love to sit on laps, and we encouraged it. A Scottie isn't that big and we kidded ourselves that there was some affection going on between us and Woodie rather than just a dog seeking comfort.      Between Ollie's death and Picard's arrival, Woodie loved to sit on laps. She would snuggle her butt in and rest her head on a knee. At times she would anchor her head there by digging in a canine tooth [aren't all dog teeth canines?] into your patella.     When she wasn't pitonning her head into your leg, she'd use your hand as a chin rest. It was amazing how she could increase the mass and density of her head at those times. We both swore that she could make her head weigh 50 pounds.

This is one of the last pictures we have of Woodie. It was sometime in the fall of 2001 since we used this picture on some of our 2002 Xmas cards – those that we'd send to our vets or groomers or other dog lovers. The size difference between Picard at her full maturity and Woodie was amazing. Pi weighed about twice that of Woodie.

We had Woodie euthanized on Thursday, September 4, 2003.      We had some trouble on Wednesday night. Woodie had gone to the vet that afternoon for a check. She's been having problems with her Addison's Disease and her kidneys. The check on Wednesday was to see how she was doing. She'd become a very picky eater and we were assuming that was because she wasn't feeling well. But, she'd been there before and bounced back.      We got her some new food on the way home and she ate her dinner pretty well. Then, about 1 a.m., she had a short bout of dry-heaves. Part of the Addison's symptomology is trembling. She was doing a lot of that after the heaves. I sat up with her a while and she settled back in about 30 minutes later. About an hour after that, she vomited a little bit and wanted to get off the bed. I took her out and she peed and pooped just a little. When we came back in and went back to bed she trembled and couldn't get comfortable. We all finally went back to sleep about 4. She woke up at 5, about 15 minutes before our usual time.      Mary Ann took care of the dogs. Woodie wouldn't eat or take her morning meds even though we stuck them in spray cheese. She allowed Mary Ann to hold her – which was unusual – and she was listless and trembling violently. We thought it might be time to have her euthanized. I went to work and Mary Ann called the vet after 9 a.m. He said that her blood work came back just in the OK range. Mary Ann talked to him and he said that her good days were getting fewer and fewer and we should consider her quality of life. Mary Ann called me and we decided that it was time for Woodie to be euthanized.      I refuse to use "put down" or "put to sleep" as euphemisms.      We made an appointment with our local vet and I came home. We took her to the local vet and were with her when she was given the overdose of anesthesia. Sadly, they had to take her in back to put in a catheter in a vein since she yelped and flinched when the vet first tried to inject her. As the vet said, "she has thin, old-lady veins." We held her as the vet pushed the anesthesia into the catheter. Before she injection was completed, she went out. She expired a few seconds after that. That was about 11 a.m. We spent the rest of the day at home.      Some time later we received her cremated remains.      It would have been easier if she'd been desperately ill and showed it. But, she was even trotting around that morning and walked herself into the vet's office. We questioned ourselves for some time afterward, wondering if we'd done the right thing. Did we have her euthanized before she really needed it? How can you explain to a dog you've had for 13½ years that you want to end her suffering?      Part of the problem was that she was a tough little dog, able to soldier-on even when she must have been feeling horrible. We owed her the grace to let her suffering end before it became overwhelming. Keeping her alive any longer would have been selfish on our part. But, it was hard.