My last article was titled the Love of My Life and when I told Stephenie about writing that article she immediately asked “Is that about me or Bubba?” We both had a good laugh because Bubba was the very best friend a man can have!
My fascination with the English Mastiff dog breeds started way back in high school. I was working for the Sanford Animal Hospital as kennel boy, and my mom was a veterinarian technician and office manager for the clinic there. One night we got an emergency call about a dog that had been hit by a car and was coming in to the clinic. When they arrived it was a giant English Mastiff who was pretty beat up and had a broken leg. Just meeting this giant dog was very cool, I had never seen a dog quite that large before. Even though he was pretty hurt he was very gentle and not aggressive at all, and I helped lift him from the car and bring him into the clinic so doctor John could start the process of stitching him up and doing surgery on his leg. From that point forward, I knew that I wanted to have an English Mastiff someday in my life, I even added that to my bucket list.
Our first family dog was a rescue from the Kitsap County animal shelter. We just happen to be looking for a puppy and a new litter had just arrived. They were black lab and doberman mix with maybe a little bit of Dalmatian mixed in. We got our first puppy and named him Jordan after Michael Jordan and he was very good dog for close to 15 years. Jordan was a very good dog and he had a lot of energy for our young family with the touch of crazy Dalmatian energy at the most inopportune times. It never seemed to fail, when I let Jordan out and I need it to be quick, that’s the day he decided he wanted to roam the neighborhood and check out every other house and make me chase him for a solid 15 minutes!
After Jordan passed over the Rainbow Bridge, there was definitely something missing in our lives and I knew we needed a new puppy to fill that void. All throughout my grade school, junior high and even high school our family had at least one dog in the house usually two. Now that we didn’t have a dog anymore it felt a little lonely coming home and not being greeted with that infectious unconditional love of a dog. I started looking around on the Internet for English Mastiff puppies but any of the ones I found were over $2000 and I could not justify paying that much, even though I really wanted a pure bread puppy. As a last resort I went on to Craigslist and did a search for the local area and to my surprise there was a new litter of English Mastiff puppies that were born about 30 minutes away. So I got the family together and we went on a little road trip keeping my little secret about where we were headed.
We pulled up to a nice home with a fenced in yard and the Mama mastiff and her six puppies we’re all laying around in the grass, in the front yard. Instantly our girls realized what we were there for and were so excited. We all got to play in the grass and the mama dog was extremely gentle and not aggressive at all, even though her puppies were pretty new. It was a lot of fun for the girls to play with the small little puppies and it was a huge challenge to figure out which one that we wanted to take home. I have only had male dogs so that was one criteria but I let the girls pick which one was right for our family. One of the little puppies had a heart-shaped darker spot on his tail ,and he was the chunkiest of them all, that was the one they chose. We didn’t get to take him home that day because he they weren’t quite 8 weeks old but we set up a date and time to come back and pick up our little guy. The mother was a registered purebred English mastiff however the father didn’t have the official paperwork but was still a purebred English mastiff. I paid $800 cash because they weren’t AKC registered puppies. So we brought our little puppy home and he became our Bubba Jenkins! For those of you who are not gamers there’s a character in gaming called Leroy Jenkins associated with the World of Warcraft game and that’s part of his namesake.
I think we only had our new puppy for about three weeks when a friend of ours called and said they were going to look at black lab puppies, and wanted to know if we were interested in a second puppy. We told them to pick out the chunkiest black male and we would take one if they were free. They came back with two puppies one for them and one for us so we added our little black lab Rascal to the family. Having 2 little bundles of energy to play together, chase each other and get into mischief was both fun and sometimes exhausting.
I think over my life I’ve had seven or eight dogs that I can remember but Bubba stands out among all of them. Mastiffs are generally a family dog who interact with and protect the whole family. Bubba was very different, he was a one person dog, he and I were inseparable. No matter where I went even if it were just to the bathroom, he had to go to and be within arms distance of me. If I took a nap on the couch he took a nap on the couch, and if I was going upstairs he was right behind me the whole way. It wasn’t that he was not loving and affectionate to the other family members he just wanted and needed to be right next to me all the time, because I was his favorite person. Bubba introduced our family to the mastiff head hug we call it. He would come up to you and use his head to push into your legs or any other part of your body he could touch, and make you pet him often while he snored trying to be a lap dog. I guess that’s a common mastiff trait because our second mastiff does the exact same thing.
As Bubba grew through the first year he was looking long legged and gangly, and was growing so fast and sleeping so much! By the end of the first year he was well over 100 lbs and starting to hit his filling out phase. Going into the second year he started to gain weight and mass and ended up around 170 lbs. It is so awe inspiring to see such a large animal that could move so quick when he wanted to. His big flappy jowls and expressive face really showed his emotions and temperament, if you paid attention. One thing that our family was not quite ready for was what we call mastiff glitter. Mastiff glitter is when a big drooly dog shakes his head and gets his slobber flying all around the house. Bubba seemed to have a special talent for this and often went to get a big drink of water and then do the head shake so he could do maximum coverage of anything in the vicinity. I swear he knew what he was doing and sometimes did it on purpose! He got his slobber up the walls, on all the decorations and even the ceiling sometimes. One of our daughters most hated chores around the house, was cleaning the Bubba slobbers off the walls! It was not uncommon to see Bubba coming towards you with the two foot slobber hanging down to the floor trying to give you love. We had special white hand towels positioned all around the house to clean up after him and to keep the drool in check.
There is no place safer than behind a fully alert and on guard mastiff. I found this out one morning when I was walking Bubba, and a potential prowler came around the corner of our neighbor’s fence. In less than a second, Bubba went from playful funny big dog to the most aggressive and protective animal I’ve ever seen. He seemed to grow even larger in size, puffing out his chest and squaring up his shoulders to the threat, and the authority of his bark was quite impressive. I didn’t even have to say anything to the man, he put up both of his hands and backed away slowly until he was out of sight. I’m so glad Mr. Bad man did not take off running, because I don’t think I would have been able to restrain Bubba from going to get him.
By chance we found a mate for Bubba and he fathered a small litter of puppies. A friend or coworker of Stephenie’s happened to mention that she had a black and tan brindle mastiff who was coming into heat soon. I took Bubba over to his girlfriend’s house every weekend for about a month and that seemed to do the trick. Bubba and Luna had 4 perfect little puppies. It was a pretty crazy delivery because only one of them was born naturally (Hercules) and all the rest had to be taken out via C-section. The puppies were all variations of mastiff coloring you could think of. One of them was black with tan stripes, another was black with apricot stripes, one was fawn like Bubba himself and the last was a Beautiful solid apricot color. We decided to take home the black and tan Brindle which is bubba’s first born son and named him Hercules. Actually the little girl who lived at the house at the time she named him Hercules and we decided to keep the name.
Unfortunately, big dogs don’t live as long as little dogs, Bubba only lived for eight years. We believe he got some kind of cancer and within a few weeks he went from happy and healthy to bad shape. He and I had a very special relationship, and I miss him a lot. I think there might be a limit of one special dog to each person and Bubba was definitely that for me!
