Duff-Dorf the amazing Viszla passes on

It is with great sorrow that I write about the passing of our dog Duff. No other dog could make you laugh at his insane feats while wanting to wring his neck at the same time. When I would mountain bike with him in Salt Lake, people would just watch in amazement as Duff would fire up one 1000 foot vertical peak after another while I would rest. Inevitably someone would ask in awe, "How long can he do that for?" In those days, the answer was usually "quite a while". One hike in the high Uinta mountains, Mary and I figured he probably ran 75-100 miles while we did 26 miles and 6,000 vertical feet. In case you are wondering, he was actually tired after that. He had two speeds, high and off (a.k.a- the meatball state). He stayed in the off position for a few days after that romp.


In the meatball position with Stella-Bella


In order to better understand the force that was Duff, I like to tell the fences saga. At one point while living in the mountains of Utah we decided to try and contain him to our property with an invisible electric fence. I dug a very long narrow trench to bury the wire and put up the warning flags so he could see his boundaries. As it was winter and the snow was deep, he could only approach the fence at slower speeds, and usually decided it was worth turning around. This seemed like a good system, but alas spring came and the snow melted, allowing Duff to get up to his cruising speed of almost 30 mph. At this point when I would let him out door all I would see was a red streak followed by a quick yelp as he breached the fence and he was off on a mountain adventure. The hit was worth the freedom to Duff. Keep in mind I was not containing the dog to a postal square size of grass. He had almost 1 acre of fenced in area to dig and frolic, but this was not good enough for the Dorf man. There was always something on the other side that was better.

When we moved from Utah to Massachusetts, we lived with Mary's parents for a while. They had a 4 foot chain link fence that went around their yard. We knew this was not sufficient to keep duff in, and I had abandoned the electric fence idea. Although I did toy with the idea of rigging a car battery to the collar to increase the negative stimulus and weight him down some. We finally decided to take the 4 foot chain link down and put up a 6 foot chain link fence. I put a tension wire at the bottom cause he was good at squeezing through tight spaces. This was not much of a deterrent to Duff. He would lie sideways and squeeze under the fence, all while yelping in pain, but eventually arrive on the other side dirty and all scratched up from the bottom of the chain link, but free. Back to the chalk board. I had a whole bunch of 4 foot chain link, so I laid this on the ground and lashed it to the bottom of the 6 foot fence. Got him now I thought. He would have to commando under the 4 foot chain link to get to the bottom of the 6 foot fence or dig a really big hole. I knew he could not jump over the fence cause it was a very steep hill that led up to the fence, so there was no way to get a good running start. I did not consider the possibility that he could actually just scale a 6 foot vertical chain link fence.

The next day when we got home from work, I asked Mary's mom for a fence report. It was a no-go. Duff had seen the neighbor dog and just scaled the fence to get over. She showed me the corner where he got out at. The one good thing about Duff was that you could run beta-testing on all your duff-containing projects by just going on the other side and egging him on. "Come buddy, let's go" I would say, and usually Duff would do whatever he was capable of to get out. Thus, one could plan the next phase of the containment project. The next phase of this project involved digging through my father-in-laws garage for the construction materials. We decided on some 90 degree metal shelf brackets that we would use pipe clamps to attach to the top of the posts. The brackets were then used to screw boards onto which formed an overhanging shelf at the top of the fence. Thus, when Duff scaled to the top he would encounter a "ceiling". This approach worked, however he did try his best to thwart it. I found him one day clinging to the top part of the fence with his front paws and using his nose and head to push the shelf boards off the brackets. He did not make much progress with this approach, but you had to give him credit for trying, even though you wanted to wring his neck for all the lost weekends spent reinforcing the fence.



What Duff would see from the ground.


Some of our handiwork


A fence fit for Duff-Dorf


Escaping issues aside, Duff was a great companion and everyone (non-dog people alike) would eventually be won-over by Duffs charm. He was a 60 lbs lapdog that loved to give kisses, and if he knew you were not into that, he would try all the harder. The dogman that we called Duff/Dorf/Duff-Dorf fell ill very rapidly and passed on early in the morning of August the 5th. It was not clear what happened, but the vet thinks he had a stroke. He is hopefully running free somewhere. We will miss you, you crazy red dog.