Dogs Are Cool

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about dogs lately.  Last week I dreamed about Moab, thumping up the stairs one step at a time, as he struggled near the end.  

This morning I looked at the New Yorker (8/8/11 edition); there were two stories featuring dogs.  I recently finished What The Dog Saw, a great book by Malcoim Gladwell.  And I just returned from the Farmer’s Market, where dogs are not allowed “within 20 feet of produce.”

Molly just got a cute little dog.  Tyler’s now living with a roommate who has a dog.  Madison and Macy are pestering their dad and mom about getting a dog.  If we weren’t going to Hawaii so frequently (where dogs have to go thru immigration quarantine, as well as be transported in baggage), I’d consider getting another dog.  But those days are now behind me.  

I’ve had some great dogs in my life.

Puppy Pal was the first dog I remember.  There was an earlier dog, Mr. Donald, a dachshund; my sister remembers him, but I don’t.  

In the “free range childhood” that I had, riding my bike around the Navy base where we lived, Pal would run next to my bike or run thru the marshes or the woods.  He rode shotgun, head out the window of the car, when my mom took me on errands.  

I came home from  a weekend Scouts camping trip in fifth grade to learn that Pal, who always had the run of the neighborhood, had come home with a .22 slug in his chest and had died.  (Such was life in the South in the late 50s that a semi-rural neighbor would shoot a dog they didn’t want around.)   I was heartbroken.  It was my first brush with death.

 My sister was responsible for our next dog, a beagle name Lita … short for Estralita (“Little Star”).  She was the runt of a litter of 9 puppies.  Because her mom only had 8 teats, poor little Lita was starving.  So, Diane took her home at 2 days old and nursed Lita with a baby bottle from her doll set!  

Lita was the first bitch we had, and all the dogs in my parent’s house from then on were females.  (One theory of why Pal was shot was that he was hanging around a house where a bitch was in heat … and the owner didn’t want any mongrel offspring.)

For my sister’s 16th birthday, she got a toy French Poodle named Ginger.  Ginger was an OK dog, as was Lita, but they weren’t really my dogs.  They were my sister’s dogs, and after she left for college, my father’s.  

I was not impressed that they both were pedigreed — in fact, I hated Ginger’s yapping.  (Most toy poodles are yappers, I’ve found.)

I really didn’t have much to do with either Lita or Ginger, as I was going into high school and college.  I was a visitor to their home, not really living with them.

Then came the best dog ever, Daphne.  It was spring, 1971, walking down a street with my then-fiance, Stephanie.  Passing a pet store, she tugged my sleeve to go in “for just one minute.”  The owner, no fool, takes out an 8-week-old Golden Retriever puppy “who we just got in” and puts the dog in a play area with Steph.  They play.  Daphne leaps up, licking face, panting, being playful.  I look at my watch.  The last thing we needed then was  a dog, especially a $300-in-1971-dollars purebred.   Well, you know what happened next: I said “Let’s go.”  Tears.  Even the dog was sad!  Of course, I capitulated.  The dog went home with us.

The first dog in a young marriage is really a training baby.  We “raised” Daphne, basically deciding how we would be parents … which came a couple years later.  I’ll do a separate post about Daphne and her son, Gabriel. She was a very, very cool dog and deserves more than passing mention.

Steph and I separated in 1978 and Daphne stayed with her, Caleb and Molly.  I was dogless again, which was OK because I was traveling a lot on business, and I was single again.

That changed in ’84 when Debi and I married, and it changed more in ’86 when Tyler was born.   The next year, we got a Golden Retriever, Rex … probably in an unconscious effort to find as good a dog as Daphne.  Rex was not real smart and very much a destructive puppy — I can’t count the number of shoes he chewed up!   As luck would have it, Rex was about a year old when we sold our house, and the people who bought our house really liked and  wanted him!  The realtor said it was the first time she had seen a dog included in the negotiations for the sale of a house!   Rex was a good dog, and he ultimately had a great time with his new family.

After moving to Cleveland we waited a bit before getting another dog — Sasha, a Harlequin Great Dane.  She was a major comment-magnet, the most common of which was “Hey, is that a dog … or a HORSE?!  Ha Ha Ha.”   Again, Sasha deserves a separate post.  She was a really good dog.  

She really fit into our lives in Shaker Heights — we had a big house, a big yard and a son who enjoyed having such a cool dog.

When we moved to California, we left Sasha in Cleveland with a woman who used to take care of her when we traveled.  The woman and her kids were so fond of Sasha that they bought a male Harlequin Great Dane just to keep Sasha company!  Imagine — two huge dogs in a modest house!  It was pandamonium.  

The woman and her kids were really upset when we said we were moving to San Francisco.  Given that our new house was smaller, our yard was smaller and the neighborhood didn’t have sidewalks, we decided that Sasha would be better if she stayed in Cleveland.  So, sadly, we left her behind and gave her to the new family.

And that brings the story to a close with Moab.  

David Glick said in an email, when we announced that we got Moab, “Dogs are cool!”   We’ve repeated that phrase often when we find something to celebrate about our dogs, if now only in memories.  

I’m glad to have had dogs earlier in my life.  I’m happy now with having grand-dogs that I don’t have to be responsible for.  Dogs ARE cool!