Yesterday we said goodbye to our ridiculously big newfoundland dog, Oberon. He hasn’t been able to go up and down stairs for a while, I’ve literally been lifting him up and down off our porch (which is no small feat for a dog his size) and there wasn’t much hope of him getting any better. But I don’t want to talk about the end, I want to remember the highlights of the 12 years and 5 months he was here.
Warning, you don’t need to read all or even any of these, this is more just an excuse for me to put down all the Oberon stories I can remember in one place. You are welcome to read them all but it’s very possible these are really only of interest to those of us who lived with him. If you want the highlights, just watch the videos at the end of this post.
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He was only 22 lbs when we picked him up from a local breeder, Amy Davis of Birchbark Newfoundlands, in March of 2001. As it turns out many of the dogs in Bar Harbor were from this same breeder, so we got meet his 1/2 brothers and cousins over the years. He rode home on Emily’s lap on the drive home, something that we never did again since he grew so fast, we literally felt like we could see him grow.
We finally settled on the name Oberon after some debate. Initially when we planned to get a newfoundland we said we would call him Bear. However after reading a number of books about Newfoundlands… everyone calls their newfie Bear. Oberon is the king of the fairies from Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and it seemed regal and important enough to fit a dog we knew was going to be ‘great’ in many ways. Personally I wanted to call him ‘Muppet’ 🙂
When we first brought him home our 1.5 year old dog Seeger thought he was the best chew toy in the world. We tried, in vain, to explain to Seeger that he shouldn’t teach this little dog to play rough since he would grow, but he just didn’t listen. Within 18 months or so Oberon was up to 180 lbs and would knock Seeger over without too much effort. Mind you, Seeger is a 130 lb lab/rottweiler mix so this took some effort 🙂
Apparently he was even extra big for a Newfoundland. As he was growing kept Amy up to date on his growth and she kept sending us very clear and articulate essays on not overfeeding him. We kept insisting that we weren’t and the e-mails went back and forth for a year or two until we finally met at a ‘Bernese Mountain Dog Day’ in Ellsworth and she inspected him first hand and said ‘He’s in great shape, not overweight at all, he’s just 40 lbs heavier than his father and any other dog from his litter’. Heh, lucky us I guess.
We attempted to fence in our yard in Maine. I forget what ‘guage’ wire fence I bought but at the time it seemed easily thick enough to keep a dog in the yard. To her credit, my friend Leslie who knows exponentially more about dogs than I ever will had said I should get a guage or two thicker but that seemed so unwieldy that it wasn’t worth the hassle. As it turns out, as was often the case, Leslie was right. Oberon not only would ‘squish down’ the fence by putting his pays over it but eventually he would, literally, just push through it. I watched him do this once from our upstairs bedroom window, he just pushed his nose into the fence and kept going. STRETCH/BEND/SNAP poof his head was on the other side and soon all of him was. Needless to say the amount of time I spent repairing and shoring up the fence, not to mention setting up farm grade electric fence systems and stockade fencing easily exceeded any additional time it would have taken to get the bigger guage fence. Oh and why was Oberon getting out of our back yard anyways? As far as we can tell all he did once he got out was go around to the front of the house and lay down in the driveway so he could greet us when we got home.
We would often forget how unusually large he seemed to other people until we took him somewhere public. Whenever we brought him to Bar Harbor he was like a mini-tourist attraction, dozens of people would cross the street to talk to us about him, Japanese tourists would ask for pictures with him (and would get a big slobberly lick when then knelt down next to him). We debated printing up flyers with FAQ on how much we fed him, what it was like living with him etc. He walked once in a parade in Southwest Harbor and got a large number of ‘Oohs & Ahhs’ from the crowd as he trotted along.
I also would walk the dogs at our house in Maine late at night and would often let them off the leash so they could explore around with out pulling me different directions. They would often go rather far off and then come running back at full speed to zip by me. This became rather normal and I didn’t think much about it until one night my friend J. Greg Williams was visiting and was walking the dogs with me and as we stood their in the street and could hear Oberon galloping towards us in the distance Greg’s eyes filled fear and he ducked behind me. I knew Oberon wasn’t going to run into us, but all Greg knew was that he was standing in the middle of a pitch black dark street with a 180 lb black dog he couldn’t see heading towards us very very fast.
He was always great with our kids, the most he would do when they were literally climbing all over him would be to stand up and move away, though since they’d just follow him he would rarely even do that.
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He and Seeger once chased a porcupine up a tree at Lamoine Beach and each got porcupine needles all over their faces. Oberon didn’t seem to mind this much even though they were in his cheeks and he didn’t even wince when we yanked them out. Along the same lines at one point in order to try to keep a curious Oberon, now tall enough to just stick his head in our kitchen garbage can, from snacking from there a friend suggested we try lining the edge of the can lid with ‘Bitter Apple’, a product supposedly so repulsive that it would repel curious dogs. This didn’t seem to be working so at one point when I caught him shopping in there I squirted some directly in his mouth. Instead of being repulsed he looked up at me, licking his chops and wanted more. So much for that product. (For the record, he did stop shopping out of the kitchen garbage eventually)
We went through a variety of ‘Big Dog’ chew toys and bones and quickly realized all these ‘This chew lasts for weeks’ products didn’t have Oberon & Seeger in mind. Most would last a matter of minutes. The only thing I saw last a week or two were ‘elk antlers’ (Seriously) purchased from my friend Leslie’s online store The Uncommon Hound.
I can’t exaggerate on how much fur this dog generated. A simple brushing would result in mounds of fur the size of a normal sized dog, and there would always be more. Fur got everywhere, we’ll be finding ‘Obie fur’ for decades (as I’m sure whomever bought our house in Maine will too)
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Oh and slobber, there was lots and lots of slobber. Everywhere. Emily joked we could collect it sell it as a high powered glue. And he would get it in places we couldn’t figure out, like how did a hairy glob of slobber end up on the phone, or the TV screen or most often.. the ceiling. Ever try to chisel dried hair slobber off a matte painted ceiling?
I have other stories too but this is enough for now. I’ll just include a few more photos for the record and end with saying, we’re gonna miss you Obie. You were a great dog in so many ways. We knew when we got you you were going to be unique, but we had no idea how amazing you would be. Woof!
This was just me with my iPhone playing around with Oberon on one walk but it get his barking recorded, something he really didn’t do that often unless encouraged.
This 2nd video was from 2002 or so, Oberon is still a bit ‘puppy-ish’ in it but you get the idea of what he was like. The song in it, btw, is by Fred Eaglesmith.
