Going to the Dogs

I was never into dogs.  (I have to be careful who knows this because, for many people, it’s equivalent to not being into Santa Claus.)  Unfortunately, I got off to a rocky start with dogs.  I was 3 or 4 when I had my first close encounter of the canine kind.  Our best friends in the neighborhood had a boxer named Ponder.  She was the sweetest, most patient animal in the world.  If there are dogs in heaven, Ponder is now leading the dog angel choir. Ponder, however, was so large that she and I stood eyeball to eyeball and could have worn each other’s shoes.  All I remember is walking into our neighbors’ house and seeing Ponder bound into the room – the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back.  After that, I was wary of anything with more than two legs no matter how sweet. 

They say people tend to dislike and fear what they don’t know.  Not so with me and dogs.  As my parents brought home one dog after another, trying to find a suitable family pet, I came to dislike and fear them after I got to know them.  We started with beagles which, it turns out, were terrible pets.  They have next to no brains so they are difficult to train, not that my parents could have successfully trained a doggy Einstein.  First, we had Walter, named after our two great uncles and the old man down the street. Walter was replaced by Moochie, named after a character on the Mickey Mouse Club.   They were dumb and boring.  They ran in the woods until nightfall then they hid behind the couch and slept. If we had to have a pet, why not a cool, smart one like Billy, Aunt Stella and Uncle Bill’s parakeet?   Billy could say things like "Ruthie's a good kid" and "Where's Bill Scheve?"  in Uncle Bill’s raspy, cigarette-smoky voice. Billy also cleared his throat just like Uncle Bill. 

I’m not exactly sure why we got rid of Walter or Moochie, but I wasn’t sorry to see them go.  For a short time we had a cocker spaniel named Rusty – he was better looking and smarter than the beagles (he could hardly have been dumber), but he had an anger management problem.  Rusty got shipped out after he bit one of the kids in the neighborhood. I didn’t have anything to do with that.

For awhile, my parents gave up on the dog idea.  My sister did not.  She was and still is a die-hard animal lover. I have no doubt that, given half a chance, she would have traded me or my brother for a dog, a cat or even a hamster.  My dad tried to hold her off by saying she had to save up some money to help pay for another dog. Since she was an unabashed spendthrift and my brother never opened up his triple padlocked safe for anything or anybody, I figured I was safe.   I forgot about the Grandpa Factor.  For my sister’s birthday, we went to dinner at a French restaurant with Grandpa K. Over the crouton-sprinkled Caesar salad, my sister started on what Dad called her Sarah Bernhardt routine (see Wikipedia) about how a dog was the only thing she had ever wanted and she would never get a dog because she had only five dollars saved up, etc., etc., etc.  By the time the chocolate mousse arrived, she had fifty dollars in her purse. One week later, our family had a two year old, black, standard poodle named Crouton.

I’m not sure if any pet could have made me a dog lover, but I know Crouton couldn’t.  It turns out that, when people sell a two year old dog, there is usually a good reason, like a major personality defect.  A brief sampling of Crouton stories prove the point.  You may not believe them because they are pretty incredible, but they are all true.  I hope some of the eyewitnesses in my family will come forth and publicly back me up. 

Crouton wouldn’t go outside, do her business and come back like our other dogs so she had to be walked.  Only as an adult did I learn that walking dogs doesn’t have to involve constantly having your arm yanked out of the socket by a lunging hound who is gasping and choking because her collar is closing off her windpipe and who thinks the command, “Heel” means you want her to bite someone in the back of the foot. What did I know of normal dog behavior?

If Crouton did escape, she would only come back if Mom drove the car around the street and opened the

door so she could jump in and go get a Creamy Whip.  (You’ll have to ask my Mom how that got started.)  When she was on an outdoor leash, she didn’t allow anyone near the front door.  Once, she took a chunk out of the insurance man’s pants, but I didn’t really count that against her – anyone who wouldn’t stop before he got close to a frantically barking, slavering dog is undoubtedly from the shallow end of the gene pool.   Indoors, Crouton had a reputation for snatching food from tables, kitchen counters and any other unguarded spots.  Once she grabbed and swallowed an entire loaf of bread just out of the oven.  That mass of hot dough pulsating in her belly was the only thing I ever saw that effectively slowed her down.

We grew accustomed to her quirks and, as with any other family member, we learned to ignore them.  That’s why we forgot to warn Paul the first time he came to the house for some big family gathering.  He took a couple of flash pictures and turned to see Crouton racing around the room, jaws snapping and eyes an eerie, glowing, flash bulb-crazed yellow.  All of my family did what they always did after flash pictures – they

climbed up on the couch and chairs to wait until Crouton calmed down.  Paul got the picture a little too late.  (Above left is the only photo we have of Crouton for obvious reasons.)

I had moved out of the house by the time Crouton died of old age.  Inexplicably, my parents jumped back into the fray and got Harley, a nut job of a schnauzer. She turned out to be such an obnoxious head case that every Christmas, Paul, the dog lover, offered them $50 to get rid of her.  They thought he was joking.  After Harley died (Paul was not involved), my parents wisely gave up trying to train animals and got Mame and Vera, two cats.

Over time, exposure to nice, affectionate, well-behaved dogs has improved my attitude toward them as pets.  It also helps that, now, I am larger than most of the dogs I meet.  I was always impressed by Paul’s family dog Tosca, who had better manners than many humans, although I did think her willingness to sit calmly with a dog biscuit on her nose until she got the okay to eat it showed a lack of initiative.  My sister’s yellow lab, Andy, is sweet and very well trained; but I wonder if it’s entirely normal for a dog to be so laid back that he let Mom’s cats pee on his head. 

We were never able to give our boys the character building experience of owning a dog because David was allergic to all the hairy stuff.  (Actually, I think most of the character building achieved by pet ownership happens to parents not kids.)  I do know that, if you’re a little leery of dogs, you give off these dog-magnet pheromones that compel dogs to jump up on you, lick you, put their heads in your lap and stick to you like Velcro.  As a result, there are lots of dogs out there who want to cozy up to me. I can handle that so don't worry about your dog and me.  We are not, however, planning to get a dog anytime soon.

P.S. Photos include Crouton, Harley, Mame and Vera, Tosca (the leaping black lab), my sister Kay and Andy in his New Year’s Eve outfit, John with a canine cousin and David offering to share his dinner (HAH!) with Danny, Kay’s previous dog. I have also thrown in two of Mary Pat's photos from the annual Reindog Parade

Click below for this post's grand finale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXiulKIgGpg