English Bulldog, 1961 – ~1972
She was named for my grandmother Candis and my boyfriend at the time, Bill Yandell. I called her Candy. She was as sweet as her name. She was purchased in Northern Vermont near the Canadian border. This is when I lived in Saratoga Springs in New York.
She loved beer! So she’d take all the beer bottles at a party and would lick them clean.
I was in Cincinnati, in my 2 bedroom efficiency apartment on 3717(?) Whitfield Ave, behind Good Sam Hospital. The woman across the hall had a boyfriend. One night he came and wanted to see her and she was gone and he was lovesick and it was cold out. He wanted to wait until she got home. For a while he sat out in the vestibule, but it was cold so eventually he asked me if he could hang out in my apartment. I let him sit at the end of the couch by the door while waited for her. Candy used to sleep every night on a couch/cot in the den. I went to bed and he stayed on the couch and Candy jumped up in my bed and it was 2 or 3 by the time the neighbor got home. As soon as he left the apartment, Candy jumped down and got into her bed, her job for the night of protecting me was done.
After I moved up to Ormand Ave, we had in Clifton a neighborhood stalker and attacker, I think he killed one or two women. So mother and dad moved down to my apartment in Cincy temporarily and dad found a dog training place and he took candy to train her as a watch dog. The first thing they did was test them and Candy failed the test. The test was that the trainer actually the slapped and beat the dog in a certain way that the dog should snap back at him. Instead of snapping back at him, Candy just crawled down on the floor and licked his shoe. The trainer turned to dad and said “you’ll never train this dog to attack or be mean. Her disposition is too sweet and she’s had too much love in her life.” I thought for sure from the boyfriend incident that she would be protective, but you never know. So anyway, mother and dad turned around the next day, packed up and went back home. Candy had failed dog school. She was too sweet to be mean.
Candy had to be put down because she had a tumor on her neck that was choking her to death. Dad took her in to be put down. I wish I would have been there.