In Man of the House: Life with the Lady at the End of My Leash, yellow Labrador Mac, calls Mary and all humans “leashers.” Today I talk with Dr. Roxanne Wallace, a Colonel in the US Army and an Orthopedic Surgeon currently stationed in Afghanistan. “I serve to heal” is her essence as she works tirelessly for her patients and soldiers. Away from this stressful calling, she says, “I balance my life and restore my resilience with my husband, 3 adult children and 2 dogs.”
1. Tell me about your dogs.
Our current dogs are Jack Daniels and Jameson. Jack is a Brittany Spaniel and Lab mix, and Jameson is a mutt we literally picked up off the street. Jack was rehomed and has been with us a couple years. Jameson’s been with us about four years. They run the house. They tell you what time to get their breakfast ready and when it’s time to go to the dog park. They hog the couch. They love being with us and being underfoot always, looking at you, following you everywhere.
2. Did you have dogs growing up?
I didn’t have dogs as a kid. The first dog I owned was when I was married with three kids. We moved to Arizona when my husband retired from the service and was going to be at home. That was our criteria. We didn’t want the dog to be alone all day. Our first dog was Bailey. Bailey was not my dog. She loved my husband and hated me. Then we got her a friend, Fosters, a rehome from an Australian Rescue League. Bailey passed while I was in deployed in Syria. My husband was at home dealing with it by himself. It was very hard on him. That was his baby.
3. How long did you wait to get Jack and Jameson?
I want to say it was 8-10 months before we got Jack. Jameson had already come into our lives before Bailey died.
4. How do you interact with them while you’re in Afghanistan?
They don’t really like the phone. Every once in a while, they’ll hear my voice and I’ll see them look at the phone if we’re on video. My husband sends me a lot of pictures of them and videos of them playing at the park.
5. Tell me about their reaction when you go home?
When I came home from Afghanistan in 2007, it was Bailey and Fosters. They were very, very excited, running around the yard, everywhere. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. When I came back from Syria in 2018, Bailey had passed and it was just Jameson. And he was like, “Oh, who are you?” He did not care that I was home. We’ll see what happens this time. I think it’ll be different this time. Jameson is different.
We don’t know Jameson’s story. He was a street dog or got dumped. One Sunday we’re driving Bailey to the dog park and I go “Honey, there’s, there’s a dog over there, stop.” We were three houses away from our house. I get down and it takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to coax him over to trust me so I could pick him up. He’s got a big scrape across his jaw and is covered in ticks and fleas. You could tell he’s been on his own for a while. He’s underweight, skittish and fearful. You couldn’t even open a soda can without him taking off into the other room. I think he spent his first year with us in the closet. He was afraid of my husband so he must have been abused by a man. Anytime my husband stood up, Jameson ran to his safe space in the closet. But now he’s been with us almost three years. Every six months you can just see a new evolution of trust and love. And now, since I’ve been gone, he’s jumping in Steve’s lap for snuggles and comfort. He’s 180 different.
6. Are Jack and Jameson close, jealous of each other?
They are brothers, in the typical sense of the word. They love to play together. They wrestle all the time. Every morning after they’ve had breakfast, they have a wrestling match and ignore us for about 10-15 minutes. But if one of them is getting snuggles, the other one gets his nose in there so he can get his snuggles too.
7. Are there any dogs on base there that you can get some dog love from?
Unfortunately, no. There are probably a lot of wild animals but we discourage any of our members from interacting with them, because obviously, it’s a force killer. If you get an infection or get bit, you have to go back home. We don’t have any working dogs here right now. We all know how to take care of them and we have canine blood just in case any of the working dogs get hurt and we’re the closest medical asset. You can’t put a vet everywhere.
8. So, back to your dogs. Where do they sleep?
Jack usually sleeps on the couch in the living room. That’s his favorite place to sleep. He wants his space. If you get up in the middle of the night, because you can’t sleep or need to do something and you sit on the couch, he’s like, “Excuse me. This is my space. What are you doing here?”
Jameson, for the first three years, slept on a bed in the room with us. In the last year, he’s snuck into our bed. He’s usually between us. I had stopped letting dogs in the bed. About a decade ago I had a tick on me and I said “That’s it.” We were living on four acres in Arizona and there were ticks everywhere. But because Jameson’s deadly afraid of any noise outside, thunderstorms or rain really freak him out, he would jump in bed with us.
9. Do they have any favorite games?
Jack’s favorite game is to play tug of war with whatever implement he can find. He knows the name of his toys. If you say, “Go get your rope” or another toy, he knows what you’re talking about and will go looking through the house until he finds it and brings it back to play. Jameson doesn’t really like to play. He’ll go get a ball once in a while but it’s not his thing. They both like to chew on their dental chews, and they’ll actually share that, which I think is funny.
10. You have grown children, right. Do you have any grand-dogs?
Yes, one of them has a rescue. He’s a Blue Heeler Australian mix. His name is Blue. He just graduated from obedience school. He’s love love loves my daughter and her roommate, but almost anybody else, he’s kind of aggressive with. He’s not settled in yet with strangers. He’s a beautiful dog. He’s got his own Instagram account, blueseph_goober_theron.
11. Can you talk about a time where any of your dogs or all your dogs helped you or your family through a tough situation?
I don’t know exactly about tough, but they certainly raised our kids. We talk about that all the time. The dogs were a huge part of that emotional connection and stability as they developed as children and adults.
12. If your dogs can talk to you, what would they say?
They talk to us all the time. “Feed me. Play with me. Snuggle me. Where do you go all day? Where did you go? Why aren’t you here?”
13. Is there anything else you want to tell me about your dogs?
They are the purest form of love and connection.
Between the time I interviewed Roxanne and publishing date, Roxanne returned home to her husband Steve, Jameson and Jack Daniels. The dogs ran to her, tails wagging, jumped on her, licked her, ran around the room and came back to do it again and again. Pure joy!
