My family favors Welsh Corgis, they are big dogs in little dog suits, with hearts too big to fit in their barrel chests. Anyway, in 1998 we had been searching for a male Corgi as a companion for our female, Penney. Our son, stationed at Ft. Wainright at Fairbanks, Ak, found an abandoned male Corgi and called us. We had him flown to D.C. from Alaska. He was quiet for the first 3 days, then decided to voice his opinions, and never stopped. He was definitely an alpha male and took charge of the house. My niece, her husband and their 2 year old son, Jeffrey, was living with us while they were looking for housing. Graham and Jeffrey bonded and no one could discipline Jeffrey without Graham getting in there to protect Jeffrey.

Graham had transformed from a shy recluse into a family dog that would protect everyone in his family. While we went for walks in the evenings he would regularly knock down a lab down the street in order to protect Penney. The lab was always surprised that a dog half his size could knock him down so quickly. We were surprised that as soon as the other dog was no longer a threat, Graham would just walk away, almost prancing, head high and a big ear-to-ear grin.
No one will ever deny that dogs aren’t thinking and feeling creatures with real emotions and try their best to communicate with us.

In January of 2002, we had a warm spell that brought the hibernating nasties out of the ground. Graham got into it with a copperhead sanke in our back yard, and got real sick, lethargic and the place where he had gotten bitten on his jaw was swelling and oozing puss. I took him to the vet, after a transfusion and several days of intensive care, we thought that Graham was going to make it. He was recuperating at home and seemed normal again. Two days after the medicines ran out, he relapsed and went down quick. He ended up at an Internal medicine vet hospital in Manassas. He held on until my wife, Karen, returned from a business trip. We went to visit him on Saturday morning and he passed away while in her lap being loved on. We were both very devastated. It took several months for us to get better, our neighbors told us that even Penney would lay on the back steps and whine.

Dan from MD