Dogged Daze
Some people love their dogs; some people love their cats; and some people love other people’s dogs and cats. Sadly, my wife and I best fit into the last category. It’s not that we haven’t tried. In the first 24 years of our marriage, we chose to share our home with five (and a half?) different canines, with varying degrees of success. In each case, however, the resident hound left us for another home before he/she left this world altogether.
Beverly is allergic to cats, so that has never been an option for us. We both had dogs as pets in our childhood, so it was natural to assume that a dog would be the pet for us – even more perfect, perhaps, than the pet boa constrictor I had when we got married. (See my essay, “Bophidius.”)
Shortly after we married, my in-laws had friends in the neighborhood who were looking for a good home for their pedigree adult pet poodle. Bev’s family had a poodle, so it was easy for us to adopt Chevas. However, we soon realized why Chevas needed a new home. In a short time, he had peed on my college yearbooks, and once he woke me in the middle of the night to show me the “present” he had already deposited by the front door. The poor dog was a mess, but that one was not our fault. Chevas was returned to his previous home.
Our son was born a couple of years later, and of course that kept us busy. But a baby grows into a little boy, and what does every little boy need? Right. A dog. Our first attempt at getting Thomas (age 3) a pet was a small white dog, Muffin. I don’t remember much about Muffin, except for the fact that soon after we got her, we moved to another town into a house with no fence. I felt the best option at the time was to give Muffin away before the move. This later gave Thomas an opportunity to tell our whole church during the children’s sermon one Sunday about how he “used to have a dog, but my Daddy gave her away.”
A couple of years later we decided it was time to try the dog thing again – for Thomas’ sake. By this time we had added onto the house and fenced in the back yard. I was not involved in the selection process because it was just before the start of the school year and I was heavy into preparing the Caldwell high school band for the upcoming football season. Beverly took Thomas to the Humane Society in College Station to pick out a puppy. Beverly prefers a small dog, so I thought I knew what to expect. She and Thomas fell in love with a beautiful black and white puppy with large feet. While she knew this would be a big dog, they decided that was going to be our dog. Unfortunately, the Humane Society has very strict rules about people adopting their dogs. Beverly had to fill out the adoption papers, which stated, among other things, that we would not sell the dog. The part that bothered me was that she could not take the dog home due to the mandatory 24-hour waiting period for approval. The next day I headed to the band hall while Beverly and Thomas eagerly headed to College Station to pick up the newest member of our family. Bad news: they gave our dog to someone else and instead offered Beverly the cute dog’s ugly sister. Disappointed, but not-to-be denied, they brought home Madam, a brownish-black mix of a puppy.
Madam was a good dog. Madam became a big dog. At six months, we had her spayed, as per the signed adoption papers, and she already weighed 50 pounds. I had to tie her to a post on the back porch to keep her from tearing out her stitches. (She almost tore down the post.) My friends in the Ag department in school had some students build a doghouse for Madam. While their efforts were appreciated, their measurements were a bit excessive. I could literally (and did) crawl inside the house myself. Fortunately, this did not become a regular happening, even when I was in Bev’s “doghouse.” However, in spite of the extra room, this was Madam’s sleeping quarters.
Thomas was only 6 or 7 by now, and Madam grew much faster than he did. Madam stayed outside, and when Thomas came out to play she was just too much dog for the little boy. Bev tried to show him how to gently knock Madam away with the hip when she jumped on you, but, of course, Thomas was the one who ended up hitting the dirt. Good dog - bad fit for our family.
About this time, Beverly fell in love with a friend’s Maltese – a small, white, longhair dog. I told her we could not acquire another dog until we found a home for Madam. We were obligated not to sell her, but we didn’t know anyone needing a dog, so I posted this ad in the veterinarian’s office: FOR SALE: ONE DOGHOUSE - $25. (COMES WITH DOG) A lady who lived alone in the country responded to the ad, and I like to think Madam had a good life living in the big outdoors.
We were soon the owners of our own purebred Maltese. M’Lady was beautiful – after hours of combing her hair. Unfortunately, with beauty sometimes comes an absence of intelligence. We tried to house train her but were never completely successful. (I attribute this entirely to her mental deficiencies, not ours. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) Thomas had some good times with M’Lady, but all too often we found “surprises” on the other side of his bed where she liked to hide. In spite of that, we loved M’Lady. After all, nobody’s perfect.
We tried breeding her, which was an interesting experience and potentially a profitable one. She mated successfully the first time. The vet monitored the pregnancy, but the delivery was very difficult and of the two pups, only one survived. The puppy, Sweetie Pie, grew to be bigger than her mom, and we sold her for a good price. (FYI: Sweetie Pie is the half-pet referred to in the beginning.) Between the vet fees and the stud fee, we almost broke even. Some time after the breeding event, we decided that M’Lady deserved a better home than ours. We needed a dog that was not so high maintenance.
In the summer before Thomas’ sixth grade year, Bev and I were gone for much of the time pursuing our graduate studies. We promised him another dog, a small price to pay to assuage a parent’s guilt for abandoning the kid.
I would not return to the Humane Society in College Station, so while visiting family in Austin, we checked out a couple of places to no avail. As fate would have it, a family at the end of the block from my in-laws had a litter of mutt puppies. Thomas picked one out and named her “Missy” – keeping with our “M”-theme of pet names, even though no knows why we started that tradition. Missy was an extremely medium-sized dog, and she was part of our family for the next eight years. She was content to be an outside dog, and she had an excellent temperament.
When Missy was a couple of years old, we moved 20 miles from Caldwell to the country just outside Somerville Lake. The house had no fence, but lots of space. We kept her tied up for a while but soon let her roam free, and she “owned” the property.
Not only was she content being an outside dog, she actually developed an aversion to being inside the house. Once we had to transport her from one porch to another porch during a storm, and Missy could not be coaxed into the house. I had to pick her up and carry her. However, this quirk allowed me a moment of false bravado years later when we were showing the house to sell. The sliding glass door to the back yard was standing wide open when I took the prospective couple into the living room. I noticed that Missy was sitting just outside the door, looking in. I turned to the dog, raised my hand with palm facing out, and in my most commanding I’ve-got-this-under-control voice said, “Stay!” She did. I don’t know if that impressed the couple or not, but the illusion of control felt good to me.
But, as in “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” time moves on. The kid grows up and goes to college; his Mom enters seminary and is often away, and poor dad has to keep up his job and take care of the dog. As Missy roamed the wide-open spaces, she fell in love with a couple of little girls whose property abutted our back property line. Ironically, the girls’ mother turned out to be a former student of mine from Caldwell. The girls’ parents saw how much they enjoyed playing with Missy, so they bought a black lab - a big dog for two little girls. Dad loved the lab; the little girls loved Missy. When we found out we were moving to Palestine, we offered Missy to the little girls’ family and they accepted. They were already using the same vet in Brenham, so once I delivered the doghouse and food bowl, Missy had a new home. Years later we heard that the new owners of our house asked a neighbor, “Why does that dog keep coming over here?”
It seems most of our friends and family have dogs and cats. With the occasional exception of a cat allergy reaction, we love our friends’ pets. We have many fond memories with Fluff, Slick, Annie, Casey, Raj, Blue, Sampson, and several other four-legged friends. We love spending time with Thomas and his partner – and their four dogs, Stella, Patti, Lily, and Coco; and Thomas’ cat Moonshine.
Maybe someday we’ll get another dog, but until then, I’m content to love other people’s pets.
enough
