Dogs Say the Darndest Things

(Sorry, this compilation contains several previous posts, some recent, plus other stories and writings from our splendid experiences with out dogs. Only Boscoe, a Golden Retriever who lived with us in Meridian, Idaho, is not mentioned. He only lived with us for three weeks because his fur and dander caused Jonathan’s allergies to flair up.)

Anyone who has owned a dog for at least a year knows the bond that develops between the animal and the owner.

Many dog owners think of themselves as more of a “Mom” or “Dad” relationship and see their pets more as their children. This is probably appropriate because the animals fit right in with the kids as littermates and become tightly integrated with the family, unlike a goldfish, for example.

People talk to their dogs just like they would to a human or perhaps more so to a child: “Oh, does Poopsie want a treat?” And they are certain the animal understands every word and responds with, “Oh, yes, please. Could I have some extra-dry doggie biscuits?” And people respond to questions and comments that they are sure emanate from the dog.

This book explores some of the fun behaviors of canines to which dog owners will easily relate and find enjoyable.

Twinkie La Belle: Poodle Extraordinaire

For most of 1992 the kids pestered my wife, TerriLu, and me to get a dog. They promised to feed and care for it and even cheerfully clean up the messes. Yeah, right…for a week, tops. In an attempt to placate them and even dissuade them, we took the kids to see the movie Beethoven about the rather obstreperous Saint Bernard who nearly destroyed the family home. Unfortunately, the movie only served to fuel the fire as the kids thought that Beethoven was the perfect pet.

Of course, you’re thinking that the kids wore us down with their constant pressure, and TerriLu and I finally succumbed. No way. We were in complete control in making the decision to get a dog. We had actually been talking for some time about finding a reason to steam-clean the carpets on a weekly basis. We also noticed that the couch and recliners had not been wearing out fast enough to be replaced with the latest styles. And then we were feeling sorry for Dr. Betts with all those veterinary school loans—we just felt we should help him out somehow. And last, but not least, we thought it would be rather exciting to have a new addition to the family without TerriLu having to go through nine months of pregnancy and then hours of labor and without me having to worry about future orthodontist and college costs.

What really pushed things over the edge was a visit from my brother, Dave, and our sister-in-law, Diann. When the conversation moved to pets, Dave mentioned his feeling that every child deserved to have someone who never gets mad at you, who always has time for you, and who lets you vent all your frustrations without ever passing judgment. I humbly suggested that I filled those roles quite well, and after the kids’ guffaws subsided, the family members decided they were in dire need of a dog.

Thus began the search for the perfect puppy. Jonathan, age 8, wanted the toughest watchdog available, which based on his research, was a Doberman Pincer. We checked out a ninety-five pound mama Doberman with $1,200 puppies and decided that ninety-five pounds of any non-human creature was seventy pounds too heavy for indoors and $800 too pricey for purchase. We were looking for a nice Toyota, not a Lexus.

Michael, age 10, favored a Bichon Frise because it would remain cute and cuddly, but after further investigation we concluded that the fragile bones might not survive the rambunctious Ross kids.

Melissa, age 12, begged for a Labrador retriever because it could fetch, it had a golden yellow coat, and she could take it duck hunting. Well, okay, not duck hunting. Melissa also suggested getting a Bulldog just so she could name it Meathead.

We wanted something fairly small so it wouldn’t eat the house, figuratively and literally (i.e. nothing over one hundred pounds and preferably nothing over twenty-five pounds). We also wanted a bit of a watch dog that would bark to warn of intruders but not bark because a car door down the street got slammed shut (e.g. Fox Terrier strung out on caffeine). We wanted something playful with some energy but nothing so wired it would wear paths in the carpet from pacing back and forth (e.g. Beagle on meth). We also did not want a languid slug of a dog where you could burn down the house around the dog and it wouldn’t even notice, other than being immolated in the process (e.g. Basset Hound on Xanax, Valium, and Prosac). We wanted a dog that was fairly easy to train, easy to housebreak, and wouldn’t snap at children.

So we considered the Miniature Schnauzer (sorry, too yappy and snappy), the Australian Shepherd (sorry, still too big and sheds too much), the Welsh Corgi (sorry, too long), and the Australian Cattle Dog (sorry, too homely) before settling on a cream-colored miniature poodle (ugly only when groomed with balls on the ankles, back, and head).

We first visited the prospective poodle puppy on Halloween afternoon and that night after trick-or-treating, we brought home Twinkie, a seven-week old miniature French poodle. Yes, it sounds like a ridiculous name for a canine but she was a cream color as a puppy and looked much like a Hostess Twinkie with four little legs sans the cream filling. Twinkie didn’t complain about the inane name, but then again, she couldn’t talk yet at seven weeks.

The kids even discussed naming her Hostess Twinkie on her AKC papers until William, age 4, who was studying trademark infringements in his law classes, pointed out that we could lose the house if the Hostess Company filed a lawsuit and won. So we settled on an appropriate name for a female dog of French descent: Twinkie La Belle.

Within four days of bringing Twinkie home, we had a light blue leash with a matching collar, a dark-blue harness with a matching sixteen-foot retractable leash, a training collar, a dog kennel with a soft, cedar-chip-filled pillow pad, three chew toys, an extra-gentle wire brush, a fine-tooth flea comb, a three-month puppy package at the veterinarian, a bottle of special pH-balanced dog shampoo, and a second mortgage on the house.

It took only three months to make the first emergency trip to Dr. Betts, the veterinarian. I had inadvertently left a fifteen pound dumbbell weight on a small bookshelf in the boys’ room and William happened to be standing next to the bookshelf when Twinkie trotted by. Because he was studying animal-reaction times in his zoology class, William decided to shove the weight off the bookshelf, just to see how Twinkie would respond when it hit the floor. When the dumbbell crushed her foot, she yelped and yelped, “Oh, he broke my foot. He broke my foot.” I panicked, when I thought of the veterinarian bills, and yelled, “Oh, he broke her foot. He broke her foot!” TerriLu started crying as she held her injured baby and reassured her, “It’s okay, Sweetie. We’ll get you to the vet. Poor baby!” And William, when he saw his yelping dog, his yelling dad, and his crying mom, started laughing, and, of course, he took detailed notes for his parent psychology class. Six hours, two x-rays, and $83 later, Dr. Betts determined that the weight pushed the tiny foot down into the carpet and no permanent damage occurred, except to TerriLu’s nerves.

Just after the move from Bothell back to Boise, TerriLu placed many of the family photographs on the floor directly below where she planned to hang them on the wall. The pictures were a little confusing to Twinkie who sniffed at the photos of her master and asked, “How did he get so small, so cold, so boring, and so lifeless?” Surprisingly, a lot of people have made the same observations about me.

In the process of selecting the perfect puppy, we received quite a bit of advice. One breeder wisely advised, “Just pretend you have a ‘toddler’ in the house for the next year. She’ll have accidents and get into things you don’t want her into. Plan on keeping up with the maturity and disposition of an energetic two-year-old child and you won’t be as frustrated and you won’t go as crazy.”

That advice has proven to be a great pearl of wisdom.

Brindle Brittany: Beguiling Boxer

In late 1995, I had neck surgery and then we decided to move from Boise, Idaho, and build a new home on five acres in Eagle, just a few miles from Boise. Since the surgical operation and the building project weren’t adding quite enough stress to our lives, we decided to increase the size of the family by one and the amount of stress exponentially. Yes, we really got a second dog, and a large one at that. Actually, Jonathan is the one who really wanted another canine and even paid for half the initial cost so it would be his. He wanted a “big” dog that could romp around with him on the property and protect him from any possible bullies. Twinkie, our miniature poodle, was, well, just a Twinkie, at eleven pounds.

After looking at and researching several different breeds, Jonathan decided on a boxer, since TerriLu and I would not even consider his first choice—a two-hundred-pound Mastiff. After checking the classifieds, we looked at several fawn-colored (i.e. light brown) boxer pups and one brindle (i.e. dark brown with black sort of stripes like tiger-eye). Jonathan and the rest of the family fell in love with the brindle pup. We even liked the name for the color of the boxer, and that’s what Jonathan decided to name his puppy: “Brindle” Brittany Ross.

On October 5^th, 1995, the family picked up Brindle. Jonathan was really good to let everyone hold her in the car but he did reserve time at home to be alone with his new puppy so they could bond.

As much as we loved Twinkie, Brindle was our favorite. In spite of her incessant intractable activities, her antics were fraught with jocular, whimsical moments of mirth.  For example,…

As a puppy, Brindle had to be rocked to sleep because her breeders had planned on keeping her because she was so cute so the children constantly held her and rocked her. And we had to rock her to sleep before putting her in her bed at night.

Then to keep track of her location at all times and what she was up to, we placed a bell on her collar that gave a pretty good indication of location and activities such as digging potting soil out of pots or chewing on books or on chairs.

Twinkie and Brindle got along great from the start – some of the time. When Brindle joined the family as a puppy, Twinkie wasn’t sure what to think of this rambunctious creature that always wanted to romp and play the way Brindle played with her littermates. In the beginning, Twinkie wasn’t sure if it was okay to fight back because she had once gotten in big trouble from me, the Dad and alpha dog of the pack, for nipping at William in self-defense. She learned that you don’t nip at any pack member even when the nipping is deserved.

Twinkie remembered that reprimand and she was reluctant to defend herself from this spirited, young pup being foisted upon her. She looked at us and asked skeptically, “Is it really okay to fight back?” With lots of encouragement from the fellow pack members (a.k.a. Mom, Dad, Melissa, Michael, Jonathan, and even four-year-old William), Twinkie stood her ground and then began playfully fighting back. It wasn’t long before Twinkie and Brindle were playing rough like puppies do and loving it. At first, Twinkie could knock Brindle down and hold her down by the throat in play but also to demonstrate who was more dominant. When we brought Brindle home, Twinkie was a bit bigger, and, more importantly, Twinkie had the definite advantage with dexterity and agility.

When Twinkie was tired of Brindle’s inexorable roughhousing, she would hop up on a couch. Lacking the coordination, Brindle couldn’t jump up so Twinkie was “safe” for the moment. Occasionally, Brindle had enough of Twinkie with her quick attacks so she took refuge under the couch where Twinkie was too big to fit.

With four months of intense Pilates training, meticulous aerobic exercise, and lots of food, Brindle weighed in at a bantam weight division of twenty-five pounds, more than twice Twinkie’s flyweight size at eleven pounds. Brindle only went down on her back when she felt like it. She was as quick and as nimble as Twinkie and didn’t need a couch to hide under – besides she no longer fit anyway. To Twinkie, Brindle was nearing the size of a couch or at least a loveseat and was too big to be pushed around. Within a year, Brindle was a burgeoning, bulging, muscle-bound, sixty-pound in the behemoth weight classification.

One day TerriLu took Brindle to the veterinarian for her shots (Brindle’s shots not TerriLu’s). By coincidence, one of Brindle’s actual littermates was getting his shots at the same vet at the same time. The other customers, mostly little, old ladies, sat nervously with their well-mannered, delicate, tea-cup sized puppies on their laps, as these two rough-and-tumble boxer pups rambunctiously romped and barked and growled and sparred and wrestled and boxed each other all over the waiting room, with Brindle much more the aggressor.

Twinkie and Brindle had starkly contrasting personalities. Twinkie was this dainty, fastidious little thing that pranced around with a “tink tink tink tink” like a little ballerina. Brindle, on the other hand, was this rough, tough moose of an animal that clomped around with a “thud thud thud thud” like a…well, like a sixty-pound boxer – with bulging, bloodshot eyes, oodles of drools, and an apathetic attitude to almost everything, except other dogs. In spite of Brindle’s distinct size advantage, she never really thought of herself as being bigger than Twinkie. She got down at Twinkie’s level to play by getting on her belly or back. She let Twinkie win at all their games. She let Twinkie chase her. She let Twinkie eat first. Brindle showed respect for Twinkie in just about everything…

…But when it came to going out the front door, especially to get in the car, she climbed right over Twinkie and didn’t even notice when Twinkie got squished between her clodhopper-sized toes, with Twinkie nearly disappearing from sight entirely like a smashed marshmallow.

One time when we were about to leave our cabin to come home, the car doors were all shut but the trunk was open. Brindle could tell we were getting ready to leave so not wanting to be left behind, she ran around the car five or six times looking for an open door. Finding none, she hopped into the trunk and sat there ready to drive home. We looked at her like, “What’s wrong with you, Dog?”and she replied, “Look, I’m not taking any chances on getting left behind, okay.” Even once we started opening the car doors and loading the car and loading the trunk, Brindle stayed perched in her position until we made her get out so we could finish loading the trunk.

Brindle never quite learned how to associate with other dogs. While driving down the mountain from the cabin one evening, Brindle saw a dog outside on the road. She went ballistic and started clawing at the window with the hackles on her neck standing on end and hair shedding and filling the air like a dust bomb had exploded. After that hair-raising incident we learned to yell “Dog Alert!” if we saw a dog on the side of the road. Then the closest person to Brindle simply covered her eyes until we passed the danger point. She never quite figured out what we were up to – she just thought we were playing a game called “Dog Alert” and so she went along with it because as you will see later, “Any game is better than no game at all,” to quote Brindle directly.

One day a nice gentleman from the neighborhood was jogging with his Golden Retriever. Somehow Brindle broke through the screen door and in 1.2 seconds, crossed the yard, the sidewalk, and the street, and had the dog pinned on its back with her jaws around the dog’s throat demonstrating with no question who was top dog. It was kind of obvious when she kept yelling, “I’m the top dog! I’m the top dog! I’m the top dog!” TerriLu quickly darted out and did her best to apologize as she also tried to wrestle and drag Brindle away from the poor Golden Retriever who was unhurt, except for perhaps her ego.

Needless to say, while Brindle was wonderful around humans, she never quite mastered the right social skills around other dogs – it was simply attack, attack, attack. Far from mastering, she never even learned the basics skills of dealing with other dogs, like just sniffing rear ends. Why couldn’t she just sniff butts like a normal dog? Mainly, because no one in the family was willing to teach her that particular social skill.

Since she thought of herself as a human in a family pack, Brindle felt that every “real” dog was a threat to our pack. Once a neighbor was playing with his dog in his front yard. Brindle somehow got out and went right next to the man and barked at the other dog – she went to rescue and protect the man from his own pet.

Twinkie, being delicate, light, and non-shedding, was allowed up on couches, recliners, and beds. Brindle, being a shedding machine roughly the size of a quarter horse, was not allowed on any furniture except Jonathan’s bed and on one specific couch on one cushion wrapped with her doggy blanket.

In the early years, Twinkie would jump up on a couch, usually to escape from Brindle who didn’t know when to quit playing. When Brindle would start to jump up too, TerriLu would say, “No Brindle! Stay down!” And then Brindle would get that sad look in her bloodshot eyes. “But, Mom, <sniff>, how come you let Twinkie on the couch?” So TerriLu would opine about dog size and toenails and shedding and smelly couches and replacing furniture before its time. Then Brindle would look up again with even more heartrending, bulging puppy-dog eyes. “But, Mom, <sniff-sniff>, don’t you love me, too?” So TerriLu would lug Brindle up and cuddle this massive creature on her lap because, technically, Brindle was not on the couch—she was on TerriLu’s lap. And besides, she was being well supervised.

Interestingly, Twinkie was not a lap dog – she preferred snuggling right next to you on the couch. Brindle, on the other hand, loved to be held on your lap, probably as a carryover from her puppy days when she was held all the time. Sitting on your lap basically meant stretching out across your upper thighs so that the center third of Brindle was on your upper legs, her head-end third sagged on your left side and her hind-end third drooped on your right side on the couch. Brindle was just a big, lovable cuddler.

Canine Fun and Frivolity

After two years, Twinkie, the miniature poodle lost the yellow cream color that made her look like a Hostess Twinkie on four legs with a nose and eyes. She also lost the white cream filling attributed to the official Hostess Twinkie (wait – actually, she never had a cream filling). Once she outgrew the puppy stage she turned a basic white.

Unfortunately, she didn’t know that she was a dog, and neither did Brindle. They spent so much time around the family members and so little time around other canines that they just thought they were having an existential experience in a human family pack. When they were exposed to other dogs they looked up indignantly at TerriLu and me and they pathetically groaned, “This is so embarrassing to have this animal creature thing sniffing me in a most embarrassing fashion. How can you let me be humiliated like this?”

As far as Twinkie was concerned she was just one of the kids—simply one of six littermates, albeit the runt of the litter. And she was undeniably the most spoiled and favored child in the family. Well, think about: On command she could sit, stay, lie down, play dead, roll over, dance, bark, and potty, which is more than can be said for the rest of her siblings. We used to tell Melissa, Michael, Jonathan, and William, “When you learn to clean, sleep, chew quietly, pick up, scour toilets, get up, shower, and settle down on command, you’ll get the same respect, attention, and privileges as Twinkie.” Typically, when we would give the command to, for example, “do the dishes” all the kids had to suddenly “go to the bathroom.”

One extra aspect we added to playing dead was “bang!” We would simply point our finger at Twinkie with our thumb up like a gun. Then we’d pull the trigger and say “bang” and Twinkie would drop like a rock. A small facet of the play-dead trick that Twinkie did not perfect was her tail—when she played dead, her tail still wagged in anticipation of being told to “Resurrect” when she came back to life looking for a treat. The kids, by the way, perfected the play-dead trick, but only when they had chores to do.

In the pack hierarchy, Twinkie’s dominance level was somewhere just above William. If I were eating my dinner in front of the TV with my plate on the floor, Twinkie wouldn’t dare attempt to sneak something from the plate, even if I left the room, especially if I strongly commanded “No!!” or “Stay!!” or both. William, on the other hand, would have to guard his plate faithfully, even while eating, or Twinkie would snatch whatever she could. Once when William was nineteen years old, he left his soup on the floor by the TV while he took a moment to get salt and pepper. When he returned, Twinkie had already finished half his soup, and William squawked, “She still thinks she’s more dominant than I am.”

When Brindle was a puppy it was kind of fun to watch her patrol the small backyard in Boise with Twinkie. You could almost hear them as they wandered through their grass-covered domain.

(Note: In the next paragraph you have to use a low, sort of dimwitted voice for Brindle because she’s big, a little awkward, and still learning from her smarter, but smaller sister, Twinkie.)

“Okay, Twinks (Brindle’s pet name (pun intended) for Twinkie). Uh, what do we do now? …Oh, we smell around, huh? Okay, got it. And now we go over here and smell some more. Alright. Got that down, too. Now what? But we just smelled over there. Hey, we gotta be thorough. Okay…. And now we race around the corner of the house for no apparent reason. Oh, I get it. We gotta make sure those birds don’t sit on our fence and break it. Besides we gotta show ‘em who’s tougher. Right? Right! Okay, now what? More smelling? Hey, Twinkie, we sure do a lot of sniffing, don’t we? Oh, you gotta relieve yourself. Well, I might as well, too. Aaahh. That does feel better. Now what? Oh, please, not more sniffing. Twinks, I’m gonna go inside and lie down in the family room.”

Twinkie personally taught Brindle one very vital dog task. Whenever the doorbell rang, you announced to the pack that someone is behind that front-door thing by barking incessantly and frenetically running around by the front door.

Twinkie and Brindle both learned where to sit during dinner. At most times, Twinkie kept her distance from the youngest children and grandchildren because they pulled her tail and ears, and stepped on her feet, and tried to sit on her back. Brindle didn’t mind any of the aforementioned, by the way. But they both knew from their Economics 101 class at dog obedience school that at the kitchen table, the amount of food that drops to the floor is indirectly proportional to the age and size of the child!! That is, the younger, smaller children are much sloppier and tend to accidentally drop more treats to the floor than older kids or adults.

One of the dogs’ favorite games was: Find Dad. Yeah, I know, not a very creative name, but it was similar to hide and seek. When I would come home from work the kids would first herd the dogs into the living room while I quietly walked virtually everywhere in the house leaving my scent – but not how dogs leave their scent. Then I’d find a clever place to hide like in a closet or lying down in the bathtub (drained, not full) or under the covers of a bed. Within seconds of being released from the living room, the dogs would pick up the scent of their alpha-dog, pack-leader—nothing like the smell of fresh HP laser-printer toner to give yourself away.

Twinkie and Brindle scampered through the house, frantically looking for their master, with Brindle snorting and whining along the way. As they patrolled, they usually checked in previously used clever hiding places, until finally, Brindle, who had the better nose, zeroed in on me and started whining and snorting and pawing the carpet. Then Twinkie came in and sounded the full-alarm bark and broadcasted to everybody, “I found him. I found him.”

Jonathan came up with his own version of the game. He would tell Brindle to sit and stay, then he would go hide far away, upstairs, or even outside on the five acres. Then he would yell, “Brindle, come find me.” Brindle would dutifully search the home or the homestead until she found her best buddy, Jonathan. This game was very one-sided: Brindle never got to hide and be sought, but she never seemed to mind. Like she always said, “I’m just happy to play any game.”

The kids loved to dress up the dogs in people clothes and the dogs just sort of went along with it mostly because they had no choice or voice in the matter. Melissa’s doll clothes fit Twinkie perfectly and William’s small clothes fit Brindle. The kids would put a shirt around the dog’s collar and button it up. Then they would put pants on the front legs of the dogs. A hat and sunglasses completed the ensemble and the dogs looked cute and funny but felt ridiculous. Twinkie would fuss, “This is so humiliating, but at least the neighbors can’t see us,” and Brindle would reply, “Quit worrying about what the neighbors think. We’re getting some quality time with our littermates, even if we do look dorky.”

The kids also loved making videos with the dogs. These were usually spoofs on recent movies, for example, Crouching Twinkie Hidden Brindle (parody of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). They had Twinkie flying out of the bushes and put together some pretty amazing fight scenes with the dogs having no clue what was going on – they were just going along with whatever the kids had going on.

The family, especially the kids, loved to tease the dogs. When the door rang, Twinkie jumped into frenetic bark mode and both dogs raced to the front door. If the family was expecting grandkids and their parents, or some other company, they usually yelled “They’re here!” The dogs then associated “They’re here!” with people coming to the front door, an event which always invoked copious amounts of barking, even though the dogs don’t know what copious means. So just for fun, when no one was at the door, the kids would yell, “They’re here!” Both dogs went nuts, with Twinkie barking and Brindle whining as she ran in circles wagging her entire back half.

When TerriLu and I didn’t want the dogs around us we would yell to the kids, “Call the dogs!” The kids would then yell, “Brindle! Twinkie! Come here, Girls.” The dogs obediently scampered off to the kids. Eventually, we could just yell, “Call the dogs!” and the dogs didn’t even wait to be called – they just took off looking for the kids.

Typically, when the family was leaving to go somewhere, the dogs waited by the front door, hoping to be invited to go along to the store or to the movie or wherever. Interestingly, however, when everybody got ready for church, (the family members got ready for Church, not the dogs) they all showered and put on different clothes than they wore during the rest of the week, and the dogs knew that they had never been invited to go along when everyone wore those clothes so they just sat on the couch and didn’t even approach the front door.

The dogs also knew when the family was preparing to go to the cabin. Bags of clothes and other items were stacked by the front door and were then taken out to the van. The Coleman cooler was filled with refrigerated items. Everyone busily ran around and the dogs sensed where they were going. They paced the floor and occasionally whined or fussed. The dogs just wanted everyone to know they were ready, willing, able, and available to head to up to the mountains, even if it meant they had to cancel a few of their appointments for the next few days.

When all items except the people and animals were loaded in the van, someone would say to the dogs, “Wanna go to the cabin?” The dogs replied, “Well, of course we want to go. Are you blind? Haven’t you noticed us running around whining and barking? Sometimes you pack members can be so dense.”

One day TerriLu said to Brindle with just a tad too much enthusiasm, “Wanna go to the cabin?!!” Brindle peeled out leaving several claw marks behind on the hardwood floor in the entry way. She got major traction on the grass and then hit the cement sidewalk, spinning her wheels like the Road Runner cartoon character, and efficiently trimmed all her toenails down to nubs in the process. Brindle flew into the van, but in her excitement temporarily forgot her Dog School lessons on Newton’s first law of motion about how an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by a force in the opposite direction. In Brindle’s defense, it had been quite some time since she studied physics. With her forward momentum and velocity, she soared into the van, tried to apply her brakes on the seat, and sailed right out the other side because both sliding doors were open. She crashed nose first into TerriLu’s Taurus which was the force in the opposite direction that opposed her. TerriLu nearly had a mirthful cardiac. She almost needed a mild sedative to stop laughing. It was at least twenty minutes before she sobered up enough to tell the family what happened. Brindle was a little embarrassed, and was looking for a little solace as she said sheepishly, “Mom, I jumped into the van and a time vortex carried me all the through the van and into your car. I don’t know exactly what happened but I might have dented your fender.” All TerriLu could do was lie on the front lawn and laugh hysterically. And Brindle asked, “What’s so funny about a dented fender?”

Up at the cabin, the boys liked playing capture the flag, hide and seek, and war games after dark. Typically, someone hid and the others went out with flashlights to try to find the hiding person. The kids figured out that the easiest way to track someone down was to recruit Brindle to your team and give the command, “Go find Michael,” for example. It took Brindle only a moment to get the scent and then less than fifteen seconds to find the person in the woods.

At the cabin all dogs had be on a leash when outside. I actually liked to walk the dogs (not “wok” the dogs like in the Philippines). Brindle and Twinkie loved the walks so as soon as I said, “Wanna go for a walk?” the dogs jumped up and down, barking wildly until they have their leashes on. Well, actually, Brindle remained fairly calm, but Twinkie jumped so much that I could barely get the collar around her frantic little neck.

The dogs, like all dogs, loved to “mark” their territory. Since they already established 100% control of the property in the immediate vicinity of the cabin, they began working on marking all of the Karney Lakes property, beginning with the remote locations first.

They rarely did their business near the cabin, but instead held everything in until they’d go out for a walk. While on the walk, using a few simple formulas they learned in their plane geometry class at dog obedience school, they made a few quick scratches in the dirt to calculate the farthest distance from the cabin that they would be on each particular walk, and it was at that location that they’d mark the territory as theirs.

While they manage just fine with the liquid marking, they preferred marking their turf using the superior, solid-matter material. Invariably, they took their biggest, most-supreme dumps only when I forgot to bring a plastic bag on the walk to clean up the mess. This meant that I needed to return to the cabin, pick up a plastic bag, and then walk all the way back to the farthest place away on the previous walk to the location of the cow-sized Brindle pie on the dirt trail.

The dogs learned that this approach allowed them to not only mark their territory far from the cabin, but also provided them with a second walk out to the newly marked territory while I did the dirty work of cleaning up after them. Apparently, I was not smart enough to teach the miscreants a lesson by leaving them at the cabin instead of rewarding them with a second walk while I retrieved the pile.

Into the Stable 

Like many families with young children, TerriLu and I tried to teach our four kids the true meaning of Christmas. This included a dramatic play that almost rivaled a Broadway production. Of course, we pressed the dogs into service and they happily went along with the family festivities, although they really had little choice in the matter.

One year we built a stable for the set, but got a little carried away with the plans—the stable ended up being so large we could barely fit it in the family room. Given the stable’s quality construction and enormous size, we seriously considered selling the house and moving into our makeshift barn.

To help teach the principle of service and especially service for Jesus, TerriLu came up with a brilliant tradition for the holidays. She filled a box with artificial straw made from varying lengths of gold-colored ribbon. Every time the kids did something helpful or nice, they could grab a handful of straw from the box and drop it on the floor of the stable. When the box was emptied by our little do-gooders, the kids could place the baby Jesus on the straw.

After TerriLu explained the concept of the good-deed box, she asked the kids how they could be helpful. Jonathan, ever efficient even at age 4, pointed to the stable and suggested, “We could put some of this straw in there.” When the kids were small it took many handfuls to empty the box and fill the stable floor. Over time the much larger hands and proportionately larger handfuls were a sad reminder for TerriLu that her kids were growing up much too fast.

On Christmas Eve, our two oldest, Melissa and Michael, acted out the part of Mary and Joseph, respectively, on their trek to Bethlehem while Jonathan and William took dual roles as shepherds and two of the three wise men. Unfortunately, my IQ was not high enough to qualify me for the part of the third wise man. Besides, I was the narrator, having memorized St. Luke’s classic story after hearing Linus recite it in Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special every year in my childhood. “…And there were in the same country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night…”

TerriLu, in addition to being the executive producer and director, handled wardrobe, choreography, casting, computer-graphic imaging, backgrounds, art direction, video, sound, lights, makeup, music, photography, stunts, stage layout, and special effects. She also perfectly and appropriately played the part of several angels (she made me put that in). Additionally, for Animal Protection Services, TerriLu certified that no animals were injured during the production. This became important when we got Twinkie who co-starred as a sheep watched over by shepherds abiding in the field. Three years later, we purchased our multi-talented boxer pup to play several adjunct roles including Mary’s donkey on the trail, a cow in the stable, a camel for the wise guys, and a partridge in a pear tree.

The last time our children played the nativity-scene roles, I inappropriately substituted one, small word in my recitation. I began reverently, “And there were in the same country…plumbers….” This small misstep caught all of the actors so off guard that they never recovered sufficiently to carry on with the Christmas story. Even Brindle and Twinkie laughed hysterically and commented on the humor injected into the dialogue, although really they had no clue why it was funny – they were just going along with the family. And it came to pass…well, no, it didn’t come to pass that year.

Several years later Melissa married Rick and within a few months Melissa was, in fact, “with child.” By Christmas she was “great with child” and TerriLu thought it was appropriate to resurrect the sacred script since she could now cast a truly pregnant Mary who was espoused and married to Joseph. Not wanting to offend his new in-laws, Rick reluctantly but uncomplainingly went along with the role of Joseph, complete with a bath towel over his head and a rope headband. With Rick in the role of Joseph, TerriLu was able to cast three shepherds, Michael, Jonathan, and William, and more importantly, the same three as the all important three wise men.

The next year TerriLu tried to again recruit Rick for the part of Joseph, but Rick said his agent was demanding $20 million per picture and two assistants. Once Rick realized that his place in the family was secure, no amount of cajoling could convince him to drape a towel over his head in the lead actor’s role. Of course, as soon as the dogs realized that Rick was bailing out, their agents started asking for more money and bigger movie-star aluminum Airstream trailers.

So our Christmas story production went on hiatus for a few years…until Rick and Melissa’s two oldest children, Brenna and Josh, were old enough to be pressed into theatrical service. And the dogs happily took their respective roles alongside their favorite little people, all of whom are contracted for the next seventeen Christmas Eves. So once again I recite the Christmas story as Mary and Joseph make their way down the hallway, across the barren DuPont carpet landscape, and into the family room to place their precious baby Jesus on the beautiful, golden straw.

Acreage and Neighbors

The dogs acclimated quickly and quite well when we moved to the five acres north of Eagle and to country living. Other than getting “skunked” on the first day of school in 1996, nearly being kicked by horses, being told by the subdivision committee that they couldn’t run wild through the neighborhood anymore, and getting “cheat” grass stuck all through their fur and worst of all, in their ears, the dogs did just fine.

Brindle loved to run and romp and play out on the property. Twinkie generally ran for a while, but didn’t possess Brindle’s boundless energy level. Twinkie, at four years, sometimes got annoyed with Brindle who was still really just a puppy at age one. According to many dog experts, boxers never really outgrow the playful puppy stage.

Both dogs got their daily aerobic exercise by chasing around the acreage. Actually, teensy-weensy Twinkie chased while macho-bronco Brindle ran away pretending to be scared—if Brindle had to “pretend” in order to get more playtime with Twinkie, then she was happy to pretend. It looked almost comical to see an eleven-pound poodle barking and racing madly after a sixty-pound boxer who was just sort of casually loping along. Twinkie’s legs scrambled at 7,800 RPMs while Brindle’s coasted at a mere 475 RPMs. When Twinkie was tuckered out, Brindle would nip at her and say, “Come on, this is fun. Chase me some more.” And Twinkie replied derisively, “Oh, Brindle. Just be glad I indulged you for one run. When you’re as mature as me you’ll comprehend how puerile these sophomoric athletic games are for adult dogs.” While Twinkie’s maturity and vocabulary are commendable, she still struggles with grammar. Notice, for example, the improper use of the pronoun “me” in her reply.

Brindle was rough and tough and didn’t have to prove it. Twinkie wanted to be rough and tough and was always trying to establish her dominance over Brindle. Once again, if making believe that Twinkie was really tough got Brindle more playtime with Twinkie, then Brindle was happy to feed Twinkie’s ego. Sometimes just for some extra attention, Brindle would roll on her back and expose her throat, showing submission, and let Twinkie growl and pounce and bark like she was really overpowering Brindle, when in reality Brindle could have ingested Twinkie with one swallow. Twinkie could have killed Brindle, but only if she got stuck in Brindle’s throat.

When Twinkie tired of frolicking, Brindle would go next door to the south of our property to harass the neighbor’s cows. Brindle would stand in front of a cow and bark relentlessly, always ready to run if the oversize playmate should ever decide to chase her. “Come on,” she’d yap. “You can chase me. You’re a lot bigger than my wimp of a sister, Twinkie. Come on. I dare you! I double dare you!! In fact, I double-dog dare you!!!” And the cow, who was even more dimwitted than Brindle, would stare blankly, take another chew on her cud, and moo, “Moo, you gotta be kidding me” (even the cow knew the proper usage of “me” and “I”.

The neighbor to the south grew rather attached to Brindle with her sagging, slobbering jowls (that’s Brindle with the sagging, slobbering jowls, not the neighbor). He would sit on his lounge chair and pet Brindle while she casually munched on fallen apples from the apple tree. One day, Mike Bingham, a close friend of the family, was leaving for home on his bicycle when Brindle decided to follow him out the driveway and onto the road. Mike waved his arms and scolded Brindle, “Go home! Go on! Get out of here!” The neighbors, who were sitting on their front porch, immediately came to Brindle’s defense with a few gesticulations of their own, and snapped, “Hey, leave Brindle alone! She’s not doing you any harm! We’re very fond of her! Just leave her alone!” Mike tried to explain that he was a friend of the Ross family and he didn’t want Brindle following him home. Fortunately, Mike got in his explanation before they called the sheriff, but not before they fired several warning shots to scare him off.

Our neighbors had a pond that attracted many ducks. One day Brindle wandered over towards the water while a dozen or so ducks leisurely paddled around in the center of the pond. Always one looking to chase or be chased, Brindle ran at full throttle, peddle to the metal, barking furiously, straight at the ducks. Brindle had never experienced water before, other than in her dog dish and from a shower nozzle at bath time. The clear reflective surface of the pond meant nothing to her other than transitioning like from grass to dirt or dirt to gravel or gravel to pavement, or in this case from grass to shiny stuff. She saw these creatures seated comfortably on this shimmering substance and thought they looked like sitting ducks (no pun intended) just waiting to be chased.

As Brindle approached at near-Cheetah speed, all the eyes of the ducks popped out of their sockets, as they squawked in unison, “Holy cow!! This dog’s gone berserk!!” Brindle was ten feet into the water and totally submerged before the epiphany registered that she was no longer above ground, or sea level, to be more precise. She came up sputtering and treading water. Fortunately, she was smart enough to turn around and dogpaddle for the nearest shoreline. She scampered home with the ducks snorting and snickering loudly at the juxtaposition of prey-versus-predator roles. She burst through the back door dripping wet, completely humiliated with her pride still floating precariously on the pond surface.

“Hey, Mom,” she moaned. “I think I fell into a wet black hole and somehow escaped.”

TerriLu explained, “No, Brindle, you ran into a pond and sank in the water.”

Brindle dubiously demanded, “But why can those ducks stay on top of the water and I can’t?! And why didn’t I learn about ponds when I studied at dog obedience school?! Somewhere I learned to dogpaddle.”

Soothingly, TerriLu replied, “Well, Brindle, as to your first question, ducks are very light and they can just float on the water. As to your second question about why you didn’t learn about ponds in school, maybe you should have paid closer attention in class instead of marking your territory and sniffing butts.”

Still sputtering, Brindle whimpered, “But then why didn’t you or Dad tell me.”

Trying to avoid an argument and suppress a chortle from a situation fraught with humor, TerriLu replied, “First of all, Brindle, you know you’re not supposed to go on the neighbor’s property and pester their animals. Second, we thought they had a wire safety fence around the pond.”

Needless to say, Brindle has hated water ever since, even at bath time.

Even worse than bath time was grooming time. Twinkie, who didn’t shed needed regular haircuts. Sometimes in between appointments at the groomer, I would hack away at the hair around Twinkie’s eyes so she could at least see. And “hack” is the appropriate word for my attempts. If she had realized how ridiculous she looked she probably would have said something, but she just seemed happy to be able to see again.

Brindle and Twinkie Doing Time in the “Little” House

The family quickly grew to love Brindle, the boxer, in spite of her not knowing, or more precisely, not obeying all the house rules, at least not as well as Twinkie, who was three years older. Twinkie was a people-pleaser and Brindle was a herself-pleaser. Twinkie was a sycophant, always obsequious, and danced precisely to the family drumbeat while Brindle was avuncular, always assertive, but danced and beat the drum only when and how she felt like it. Brindle pretty much pushed the obedience boundaries wherever and whenever she felt like it, not really caring about the consequences. For the most part, she was “happy-go-lucky” Brindle, which is what part of what made her so endearing, beguiling, and lovable.

When we bought Brindle, TerriLu and I had already forgotten that having a puppy in the house is like having a toddler that gets into everything. And, of course, Brindle, like a toddler, was curious about everything because everything was new to her and the way dogs check things out is with their mouth, their tongue, and, worst of all, their teeth.

For each of the first six months we had Twinkie and Brindle, I tried to talk the kids into selling the dogs and getting anything that didn’t tear the house apart, pee and poop on the carpet, dig potting soil out of the houseplants, and chew the feet off of rocking chairs and the corners off of books. I offered motorcycles, go-karts, a boat, a water park, a zoo, and a Space Shuttle. But I must say that after six months, I wouldn’t have traded the dogs for anything, and I know the kids would have traded me in a heartbeat before getting rid of the dogs.

The dogs were never belligerent or pugnacious by nature, but they did occasionally find their way into trouble. The ensuing consequence was a scolding or a shake on the neck – like an alpha leader would do to a wayward wolf. The ultimate punishment was puppy prison.

When the family walked out of the kitchen, rapacious Brindle liked to get on her hind legs and reach up onto the kitchen counters and purloin whatever people food she could get her paws on. Traditionally, this included cubes of butter, loaves of bread, leftover KFC bones, and pizza or anything to slake her sweet-tooth cravings. Twinkie, because of her diminutive size couldn’t actually reach the counter, but she was not an innocent bystander. She generally acted as the look-out and egged Brindle on. “C’mon, Brindle, hurry it up. Nobody is coming. Do it now.” After Brindle did the initial dirty work in clearing the counter, they shared the spoils. And, consequently, they shared the inexorable consequences.

Normally, when family members walked into a room where the dogs were lounging, the dogs would jump up and down with excitement, but if they had been sneaking pizza or bread off the counter, they would approach the family with heads down and tails between their legs. Sure enough, the incriminating crumbs, pizza box, and plastic bread bag were on the floor—they never figured out how to hide the crime-scene evidence and wipe off any paw prints. Then again, you can hardly blame them – there were no CSI shows on TV back then.

When the family discovered the dastardly deed in the kitchen, both truculent dogs went to doggy jail: Their old dog kennel crate under the stairs. It was a tight fit for a full-grown boxer and a miniature poodle, but at least it wasn’t solitary confinement and it was only for a few minutes. Incidentally, we never once in all their years ever hit the dogs. We, as the books explained, would shake the nap of the neck and growl at them, just like a pack leader would do for an infraction of the pack rules. And for some infractions, usually patently overt acts of disobedience, they got a short “time out” in the kennel.

Twinkie was always mortified when she was banished to puppy prison while Brindle was merely apathetic, having done quite a bit of time in her day. As a matter of fact, when TerriLu or I would walk into the kitchen after a food snatching, we didn’t have to say a word to Brindle—she’d just lick her chops and head straight for the kennel under the stairs. Twinkie, in contrast, looked up, feigning innocence, and cobbled together an excuse to impugn Brindle, “But I’m not even big enough to reach the counter.” And I, who am nobody’s fool, except for TerriLu’s, would say dourly, “Nice try, Pizza Breath. You want to explain the tomato paste on your nose? Get in the kennel.”

In their cramped, inextricable quarters, Twinkie would chide Brindle, “I told you not to, but you just had to do it. Now they’re mad at us. What if they don’t like me now?” Brindle would continue to slurp the sauce and pepperoni from her incisors and shrug, “Who cares? They’ll get over it.” So Twinkie would try a different approach. “But it’s humiliating to be caged in here like some kind of animal. It’s inhumane and all because you couldn’t keep your paws off the counter.” And Brindle would again shrug, “Who cares? <buurrrp>. It was worth it.”

TerriLu actually cleverly cured Brindle of pulling food off the counters. She rigged up a sheet of cardboard with empty tin cans all over it. When Brindle pulled it off the counter, the whole thing came loudly crashing down on both dogs. It didn’t hurt them, but it scared the pants off of them—they haven’t worn pants since, except when the kids dressed them up. The clanging noise without any pizza as a prize cured Brindle of the habit. The other key was to teach the kids never to leave food on the counters or the table.

One time Brindle got in trouble by herself for something and got marched off to the dog kennel under the stairs. Upon hearing the commotion, Twinkie, who was innocently sitting in the master bedroom, hopped up and headed straight for the kennel, too, assuming she was in trouble as well.

For their birthdays in 1997, the dogs got one of those invisible fences with the shocking device worn around the neck—boy, were the dogs ever excited. Their excitement turned to shock (pun intended) when they learned what it does. It allows the dogs to run freely around the yard without a rope or chain. The invisible fence is a wire buried underground around the perimeter of the yard and sends a signal to the shocking collar when the dog gets too close to the perimeter. Unfortunately, it sounds like cruel and unusual punishment, but fortunately, dogs learn quickly to stay away from the edges of the yard, but unfortunately, or fortunately for the dogs, I never got it working right so we went to using a long leash when they had to go outside and do their business, and they spent more time indoors—they just couldn’t roam the neighborhood prowling for cats and skunks like when we first moved to the acreage.

If we were all out in the yard together, we’d leave the dogs off their leashes and just let them run free. Usually, they stayed close by, or a whistle would bring them running. If they didn’t listen to a voice command to “Come!” or a whistle, we would yell, “Candy!!” which meant a real treat of some kind – usually beef or some kind of leftovers. They learned quickly that it was always worth coming home for “candy.”

Canine Economics 101

When our dogs studied at Dog Obedience School, they ostensibly took an extracurricular class in economics. They clearly grasped the basic concepts of supply and demand, where the value of a product is inversely proportional to the supply of that product. That is, an overabundance of a product pushes down the value, while scarcity of a product drives up the value.

Case in point…. Most dog owners only feed their dog once a day and they watch in a matter of minutes as the dog wolfs down the food (no pun intended). Dogs are essentially domesticated wolves and wolves are essentially scavengers and scavengers must devour things quickly before a fellow wolf-pack member impolitely invites himself over to help gobble down the food. With the dog food coming only once a day, it appears to be in short supply and therefore has great value and must be ingested quickly.

One meal a day is one way to feed dogs—it’s quite efficient. It’s a little more difficult when you have two dogs in the same house, especially when they come in two drastically different sizes and temperaments. After being spayed, Brindle picked up another ten pounds, tipping the scales at a bone-crushing seventy pounds. She swallowed most food items whole and disposed of any leftovers on a standard-sized plate with one massive swipe of her colossal tongue. At the other end of the spectrum, our dainty, pedantic poodle, Twinkie, weighed a petite eleven pounds, never ate with her elbows on the floor, and always used a napkin.

In our home, we did not feed the dogs once a day because Brindle would scarf everything down before Twinkie could even get her napkin out! Instead, every day we filled the dog-food dish with generous amounts of Zamzows dry, geriatric lamb-and-chicken-based dry dog food—mmm, mmm, good! For most of the day, the dog food sat in the dish, always available, always in plain sight, always in copious amounts, with an adjacent stock of dog food stored in a plastic container for easy distribution—the distribution channel being one of the four principles of marketing that the dogs had not yet studied. With the dog food in ample supply, Brindle and Twinkie saw very little value in it, and so it sat patiently in the bowl, waiting to fill the measure of its creation.

Once or twice a day we hand fed the dogs dry—really dry—dog biscuits in the shape of a bone. These “treats” felt and looked like cardboard, and being the connoisseurs of cardboard that we are, we determined that the biscuits were “tasteless” cardboard shaped like a bone. However, because this treat was rare—as in rarely available, not rare, as in barely cooked, although, for all intensive purposes, they did seem over-baked—the dogs placed considerable value on this bone-shaped indulgence.

Unlike the dog food, we did not keep a box of these biscuits in eyesight of Brindle and Twinkie. But they correctly surmised that a stockpile of biscuits sat in the garage just outside the utility-room door. To quote from the canine economic textbook: “Biscuits, while significantly substandard in flavor, are appreciably more desirable than fat-filled dog food because the biscuits are in short supply” (Essential Economics for Canines, page 31).

Once or twice a day, Brindle whined and moaned and pawed at the floor, as if, like Lassie, she was frantically trying to tell us, “Little Timmy is lost in the woods and I know right where he is and you need to follow me posthaste or before nightfall little Timmy might die of dehydration, hunger, hypothermia, exposure, or all of the aforementioned, or worse yet, he could fall prey to some carnivore in the woods and you will have blood on your hands.” Not wanting blood on our hands, we got up from wherever we were sitting while Brindle bounced up and down and led us to the door to the garage, confident that we thought we were on a rescue mission for little Timmy who was apparently lost in the garage. It is, in fact, possible to get lost in our garage, not because of its immense size, but because I work hard to keep it cluttered. Once it took my wife a week to find me when I ventured off alone to acquire a measuring tape from the tool box, and neglected to leave breadcrumbs in the path to find my way back. Once a neighborhood child wondered in through our open garage door and was never heard from again. But I digress….

In the garage, we had large and small biscuits for Brindle and Twinkie, respectively. Even though Brindle’s biscuit was four times larger than Twinkie’s, Brindle still consumed hers first because she was over six times larger, by weight, than Twinkie. Also, Brindle tended to swallow just about anything without chewing so it hardly even grazed the taste buds. So even though she hardly tasted the biscuit—or if she did and she found, to her chagrin that it tasted like over-baked cardboard—she still placed high value on it, because it appeared to be a luxury item in short supply. To quote again from the canine textbook on economics: “To make something more desirable, dog owners make it more difficult for dogs to obtain” (ibid., page 143).

Twinkie evidently paid more attention in her Microeconomics class than Brindle did because she took the economics of biscuits to a whole new level. While Brindle gulped her biscuit down, Twinkie carried hers around with her, letting it stick out of her mouth like a cigar. Then Twinkie got down on the carpet with her micro-sized biscuit in front of her nose. If Brindle came over sniffing for a small “Twinkie” biscuit or even just crumbs, Twinkie carefully extended a possessive paw to partially cover her treat—lowly and little, yes, but still available for consumption. She then sneeringly sang, “Na, na, na, na, na, na. Even though mine is smaller, at least I still have one.” (Okay, so Twinkie isn’t much of a lyricist or a singer). Again, to quote directly from the textbook on canine economics: “The scarcity of one tiny, untasty, over-baked, cardboard-like dog biscuit goes up significantly in value when placed between two dogs” (ibid., page 278, Italics included in the original text). So in addition to trying to be more dominant, Twinkie also became a manipulative control freak!

Scraps from the table or from meal preparation are even better than dog biscuits because while they are about as rare as biscuits, they have significantly improved flavor, including a variety of flavors. When we first bought Twinkie, my boss at work, Bruce, told me to never feed Twinkie during meal preparation or from the dinner table. That way, she would never know that there is something delectable to eat when you are in the kitchen. She would never associate the activities or the smells of the kitchen with anything that tastes better than biscuits or dog food. Bruce also added that if Twinkie would just eat the dog food in the bowl, she would be much healthier, would never beg for food, and would never know what she’s missing. He mentioned an associate at work who always fed his dog mega-doses of people food. On the dog’s birthday, he and his dog watched Rin-Tin-Tin together or some other dog movie, and the birthday dog got to eat a hefty, medium-rare steak and a two-layer birthday cake. The dog was constantly throwing up, basically, at both ends.

So for Twinkie’s health and wellbeing, as well as the health and wellbeing of our DuPont carpet, and our sanity, the entire family agreed to never hand feed Twinkie anything, especially people food. We strictly enforced this rule with the kids. Of course, she was so cute and looked so deserving that I, the alpha dog of the family pack, felt it was within my pack-leader executive privileges to occasionally sneak her a few extras from the table. It didn’t become too much of a problem until we got Brindle. Boxers are droolers and can slime an entire pant leg before you can gasp, “Oh, yuck, Brindle! Look what you did to my pants!”

Brindle, though, was very patient. While Twinkie fidgeted and whined and danced in circles in anticipation of a table scrap, Brindle patiently and quietly sat to my side. Sometimes she parked herself there and just drooled from her saggy jowls—the thick saliva looked like stalactites growing slowly from her mouth until they stretched to the floor. At other times, she scooted in and still sat, but rested her entire jaw on my thigh, soaking my pant-leg with drool in the process.

Having stuck to the original rules agreed upon by the human members of the pack, TerriLu and the kids rarely, if ever, shared any food with Brindle or Twinkie so anytime I was in the kitchen they just parked their carcasses beside my chair and waited for me to drop something to the floor (that’s the dogs parking their carcasses by me on the floor, not TerriLu and the kids).

When I loaded the dishwasher, the dogs knew that scrumptious stuff occasionally hit the floor. When my back was turned, they knew they could usually sneak a few licks from dirty plates that were stacked in the dishwasher. I often just placed the plates on the floor and let the dogs lick them clean. I didn’t even have to wash them because, amazingly, when the slobber evaporated, I could put the dishes in the cupboard, and the family and guests couldn’t even tell the difference from a dishwasher-washed plate (just kidding, TerriLu and guests).

Interestingly, whenever I unloaded the dishwasher, the dogs just snoozed in the living room. Brindle and Twinkie learned that never, ever, in their entire lives, had a single scrap of food ever fallen from a plate coming out of the dishwasher—it only happened with plates going into the dishwasher. One final quote from economics canine textbook: “When dishes are being extracted from the dishwasher, go to the living room, and dither ‘til you drop” (ibid., italics included in original text, page 323).

So we see that dogs indeed possess a rudimentary understanding of economic principles, although it will probably be several decades before a canine chairs the New York Stock Exchange or the Federal Reserve.

Bugs, Gophers, Skunks, and Dogs

In March 1996, TerriLu and I moved our family into our newly built home on five acres in north Eagle. Having never lived out in the country, we quickly discovered that country life had a distinctive disturbing dark side, one you never see in Martha Stewart’s magazine.

In order to tell you about the dogs, I have to tell you about the skunk. Before I can tell you about the skunk, I have to tell you about the gophers. And before the gophers, I have to tell you about the spiders and earwigs.

First came the earwigs. When we bought the five acres, no one informed us that our property was located in the center of the 100,000-year bug plain and that 1996 was the 100,000^th year. Much to our surprise, we had earwigs coming out of our ears, quite literally, at night—not a nice way to wake up from a sound slumber. After dark, the yellow paint on the exterior of the house looked like it was infected with crawling black polka-dots.

The earwigs set up their Ada County Logistics headquarters at our residence. We became suspicious that we were the command center when we found miniature satellite links strategically located along the baseboards in the kitchen. Our suspicions were confirmed when we intercepted some of the earwigs’ covert invasion plans coming across the television. With their limited intelligence, the earwigs had neglected to encrypt their messages. While the little critters didn’t do any real damage, they were gross, and they literally came out of the woodwork.

The kids became quite adept at smashing, trashing, and dispatching the earwigs. The two older boys, Jonny and Michael, learned from a friend that they could carefully stretch an earwig like a rubber band and then launch it with a “snap!” Using a little creativity mixed with a dose of juvenile, male morbidity and testosterone, the boys discovered they could electrocute the earwigs with a “crackle” by placing them on the Tyco HO race-car track wires. And just in case the electric current didn’t do them in, the race-car monster tires quickly crunched the critters! Melissa noticed that when she stepped on the creepy crawlers just right on the hardwood floor, they produced a distinctly audible and fairly satisfying “pop!”

So the kids could make the earwigs, “Snap, Crackle, and Pop” like Kellogg’s Rice Crispies, although we never got around to making Marshmellow Earwig Treats.

While certainly providing tremendous entertainment value, these methods did little to exterminate the hordes of earwigs on the property. Eventually, we used many gallons of professional-grade bug spray to rid our new home of the bugs in a more efficient but less creative way.

By May the earwigs were gone, but before vacating the premises, they commissioned a contingent of spiders to begin a summer invasion. Fortunately for us, the spider recruitment numbers were low that year due to a spider union strike. Unfortunately for us, the spiders skittered away much faster than the earwigs, making them more difficult to capture. And we lost some of our help: William, our youngest, and Melissa, our only daughter, didn’t actually try to capture any spiders, having decided to keep a respectful distance after viewing and internalizing the movie Arachnophobia. Sadly for Michael and Jonathan, the spiders didn’t stretch or pop, nor did they stay on the race track long enough to get zapped or crushed.

By midsummer the bugs were under control just in time for the gophers to set up camp. With five glorious acres, the gophers established a significant rodent city with a complex network of underground thoroughfares as well as a civic center and educational facilities. At Zamzows we purchased several gopher traps, and TerriLu soon became a famous and proficient gopher trapper. Okay, she became a proficient gopher trapper. Alright, so she managed to trap about a dozen gophers that summer.

Brindle, our rambunctious boxer, quickly became an accomplished gopher hunter. With her exceptional olfactory sense, she would sniff around the property until she smelled fresh gopher at one of their many holes. She would cock her head to the side and listen. With patience and her acute hearing she would wait until she heard a gopher nearing the surface. Then with lightning reflexes she would pounce and pull the gopher from the ground. Not violent by nature, Brindle was never quite sure what to do with her newfound friend once she pulled it from the ground so she literally just played with it. She would nudge it to run so she could chase it, which didn’t result in much of a pursuit. Then like a killer whale with a sea lion, Brindle would mouth the gopher and throw it so she could fetch it. If she had an opposable thumb, Brindle probably would have set up a game of chess or Monopoly.

Eventually, the pitiful gopher was put out of its misery because it drowned in Brindle’s excessive slobber. Whenever, a gopher died, Brindle, like any good pack member, affectionately left her prize on the back door step as a gift for TerriLu, one of the pack’s two alpha leaders. TerriLu, always appreciative of any act of kindness, graciously accepted Brindle’s gift with a little praise and an affectionate scratch behind the ears, but she left me the privilege of disposing of the carcass.

Over a three-month spree, Brindle had seven confirmed “drownings” to her credit, which was an impressive 2.33 gophers per month. Sadly, when Brindle’s adult gophers expired, the babies sometimes waddled out of their hole and followed Twinkie, our miniature poodle, who, in the daylight, apparently reminded them of their mother.

At the end of the summer on the first day of school, I let the dogs out to do their business and to perform their morning security check of the property. Twenty minutes later, right on schedule, they barked at the door to come in for breakfast—mmm, water and extra-dry Science Diet Lamb-and-Rice Formula. Instead of stopping at their food bowls, they trotted inside to wake TerriLu and get an affectionate, early-morning back rub. As they passed through the utility room, I noticed a peculiar, yet vaguely familiar stench—something I’d smelled along many a highway. I followed Brindle and Twinkie into the master bedroom and asked, “Do the dogs smell like skunk?” TerriLu threw back the covers, involuntarily gagged, and blurted laconically, “Yes!” I quickly escorted the malodorous malefactors out the back door while TerriLu opened all the windows.

Using an old family remedy, we bathed the dogs in ketchup which neutralizes the skunk smell. The ketchup dousing stained Twinkie a bright, beautiful shade of orange. Remember those grade-school painting classes—a white poodle mixed with red ketchup makes orange. Brindle, meanwhile, turned out to be a gorgeous, honey-golden brown.

Twinkie, overly concerned about her appearance, tried to rid herself of the ketchup smell by wiping her nose in the dirt and digging with her paws. As a result, she had a beautiful orange body with brown dirt from the ankles down and the eyes forward. Somewhat perplexed, Brindle scrutinized the brown and orange creature and said, “Don’t I know you? You look vaguely familiar. Hey, did we go to the same high school together?” Contrary to Brindle’s comment, neither dog has been to high school although Twinkie went to Jonathan’s third-grade class once for show-and-tell.

While Twinkie tried to smear off the ketchup with dirt, Brindle just licked the ketchup off her own fur. She was pleasantly surprised to find that she had never tasted so good. The ketchup that remained on her fur dried and then stiffened up, leaving Brindle looking rather pathetic—like she’d just been shellacked.

Eventually, when even the dogs’ tireless efforts and our countless eviction notices failed to reverse the tide of incoming critters, we acquiesced, and just deeded part of the land to the creepy invaders…except for the skunk. Although we never become close friends, we at least tolerated the various pests living outside the house. On five acres, especially in the country, there’s not much else you can do with the incessant stream of reinforcements staking claims on your land. Even Martha would agree, “If you can’t beat ‘em, you should join ‘em.”

Darth Beta: May the Fish be with You

No other pet compares with a dog, unless you haven’t owned a dog. Sure you can enjoy other pets but most pets just don’t provide the playful interaction that makes such a fantastic human-canine relationship. For example, and I digress…

One evening I took the three older kids, Melissa, Michael, and Jonathan to Petco next to the Boise Towne Square Mall to get some dog food. On the way, we mused about how fun it would be to surprise William, age seven, with his very own pet. William had mentioned that he wanted a pet of his own because Melissa had Casey, her cockatiel, Jonathan had Brindle the boxer, and Michael sort of had Twinkie the poodle.

I suggested maybe getting a goldfish because of the upside that they’re only 14 cents each, in spite of the downside that they don’t live very long. I reasoned that even if we had to buy a replacement goldfish every two weeks, it would only cost $3.64 per year for twenty-six fish, or less if William lost interest sooner.

We discussed just getting a barebones system: a goldfish in a jelly jar—no air-bubble pumps, no sunken pirate ships on the bottom, and no colored rocks.

At the pet store we checked out the fish section. Sure enough, there was a 55-gallon fish tank loaded with 14-cent goldfish. We asked the young clerk if she could get a goldfish and asked if putting it in a jelly jar would be okay.

“Actually,” she replied, “you need a bigger bowl for goldfish because they get bored.”

Yeah, right, I thought. What are you suggesting? We hook up a TV with cable so the goldfish can watch Flipper reruns and The Little Mermaid? And just our luck, the fish will one day lose the remote and manually turn on the TV while still in the water. He’ll be electrocuted and we’ll have a fried goldfish and a very sad William.

“How come those pretty purple fish are in those little, clear-plastic drinking cups?” I asked. “They don’t seem to be getting bored in their confined quarters.”

“Oh, they cost more than a few quarters,” the clerk replied. “Those are beta fish and they don’t get bored. They do fine in small bowls and they live a lot longer than goldfish, like about a year or two. But they cost $3.00 each.” That sounded like a reasonable investment compared to the goldfish and all the required trips back to the pet store to get replacements. “Of course,” she continued, “you need to get this plastic fish bowl with a lid because beta fish can jump out. The bowl with the lid is on special right now for $2.00.

“But,” I pointed out, “you don’t have lids on these little cups.”

“Yes, but we know how to keep the fish from jumping out.”

“But…”

“Oh,” she continued, “you’ll need to get some dried blood worms to feed your beta fish. They don’t eat fish flakes.”

“How much are dried blood worms?”

“$3.50 a jar.”

“You know, my wife will love having dried blood worms in the house.”

Not responding to my comment, she deadpanned, “Do you have soft water?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll need this additive for $4.00 a bottle. Add a few drops whenever you change the water.”

“What if we just use hard water?”

“You’ll still need the additive.”

Well, to bring home a pet for William, I thought we would need 14 cents, some water, and a jelly jar. Instead, we needed a third mortgage on the house.

But it was worth it—William was ecstatic! Like Jonathan did with Brindle the boxer puppy, William wanted some private time to bond with his new fish. William affectionately named his beta fish, “Beta Lu Ross” taking the middle name from Grammy (TerriLu’s mom: Nancy Lu), TerriLu, and Melissa Lu, thus making “Lu” a four-generation middle name. I preferred the name “Darth Beta” but it was William’s fish to name. So Beta Lu lived in the bathroom on the counter in her plastic fish bowl with a lid so she couldn’t jump out.

After school one day, Jonathan had a friend over to play. His friend noticed Brindle, the rambunctious boxer, mostly because she was jumping all over the friend and slobbering on him. “Oh,” he remarked, nonplused, “you have a dog.” He then asked if he could use the bathroom. When he came out, he blurted, “Wow, you guys have a beta fish!!” Obviously, not a dog lover.

Several months later we took a family trip to see family in Seattle and William had the neighbor fish-sit Beta Lu. When we returned to Eagle a week later, TerriLu and Melissa noticed that Darth Beta looked a little different. They checked with the neighbors who said that the fish had died and they felt so guilty they went to the pet store and bought a replacement. We should have told them that if the fish died, not to worry. William probably wouldn’t have noticed since TerriLu and Melissa usually changed the water once a week.

We explained to William that Beta Lu had died, which didn’t faze him in the least, and that this was a new fish, which William happily and creatively named Beta Fish II. Sadly, that year, Beta Fish II also died. The autopsy confirmed that Beta Fish II had probably been “floating” for a day before anyone noticed. William just thought the fish was doing the back float or the backstroke. Jonathan deftly commented that the fish may have been practicing the back float when he had a bad stroke.

At any rate, Beta Fish II received an honorable burial at sea. More precisely, he got flushed down the toilet. And, unlike Disney’s Nemo, he’ll never really make it out to the real sea so a non-descript septic tank in Eagle, Idaho will have to suffice.

Dogs are People Too or People are Dogs

Dogs quickly adapt to a family lifestyle. And they either think they are people in a family or they think the family members are dogs in a pack. Even our children had a hard time distinguishing between the dogs and the humans.

In 1985 we got a nervous, older dog from the pound and named her Ginger. One day TerriLu asked Michael, age 3, “What’s the difference between you and Ginger?”

“I’m a boy and Ginger’s a girl,” replied Michael. Notice, he didn’t say, “I’m a boy and Ginger’s a dog” but “I’m a boy and Ginger’s a girl.”

One evening as I passed through the kitchen I glanced at Twinkie and called her by one of her nicknames. “Hi, Stinky.”

“Hey, Dad,” William, age 4, blurted while standing on one of the kitchen chairs. “Which one of us were you talking to?”

“Who do you think I was talking to?” I responded with a smile.

Pointing at Twinkie, William replied, “The girl down there.” Again, notice Twinkie is just a girl, another sister, a female, not a dog.

One evening I called home from a weekly date with TerriLu just to see how the kids were doing. Michael, age 10, answered the phone and explained that they were training the puppy, Twinkie.

As he spelled out the command words, he said, “We’re teaching Twinkie to S-I-T and to C-O-M-E.”

“Why are you spelling the words?” I asked.

“Because Twinkie’s right here.” As if spelling the words would make a difference. I guess Michael was afraid if he said the command words, heaven forbid, Twinkie might sit or come.

One day William and I waited inside Dr. Betts’ veterinary clinic while Mom took Twinkie outside for a quick walk to do her business. As William and I stared out the window at Mom and the puppy, William, age 4, observed, “There are two people inside and there are two people outside.” Not a person and a dog outside, but two people.

There are actual contests to show dogs and owners that look alike, and in many cases and in many cases it’s hard to tell who’s the dog and who’s the person. One time we took Twinkie with us up to see my parents. With Twinkie’s white curly hair on her head and her persnickety personality, my mom remarked that Twinkie reminded her a lot of her Aunt Esther. Mom had a beautiful picture of Aunt Esther wearing her glasses. We found some glasses that looked similar to Aunt Esther’s, put them on Twinkie, set Twinkie next to the photograph, and sure enough, we almost had twins.

Interestingly, no one has wanted to claim to look like Brindle with her snaggletooth grin, sagging jowls, bloodshot eyes, and constant drool. I suppose I came the closest, especially with the constant drool, but Brindle was actually so ugly she was cute and she had the sweetest personality and disposition that you just couldn’t help falling in love with her.

When we first brought Brindle home Twinkie was quite disgusted with this new creature introduced into the family pack. A hairy, smelly thing, that just didn’t belong in the family, not too dissimilar from me. So at first they didn’t get along all that well.

At one point, Twinkie’s demeanor changed, and she was a bit crestfallen when she correctly surmised that she, too, like Brindle, was just a dog. Her depression lasted only a few days thanks to Prozac though when she suddenly realized that the rest of us in the family pack were dogs, too. We just were a different breed of dog that looked different, and in fact, according to Twinkie, a bit homelier in comparison to her, and we didn’t smell nearly as good as she and Brindle smelled.

The pack hierarchy has changed a little over the years, primarily with Twinkie trying to assert a higher position in the pack. She really wanted to be just below me, the chief alpha dog. She felt her place was up there with at least Melissa the oldest child and just one rung under the alpha-dog pack leaders, Mom and Dad. Her real position was probably just under Jonathan, child number three, but Twinkie never believed it. Brindle never really cared about her position in the pack—she was just buddies with her best friend, Jonathan, and she liked everyone else in the pack, too. To her, nothing else really mattered.

When we first got Twinkie, she was so cute and small that we made the mistake of letting her sleep with TerriLu and me, the pack leaders. Then Twinkie started getting jealous of TerriLu. If TerriLu just put her arm over to touch me, Twinkie would let out a low growl. That didn’t set well with TerriLu or me so Twinkie got demoted immediately and had to sleep with Melissa. Besides, TerriLu didn’t want a smelly dog sleeping with her anyway—a smelly husband was enough.

At first Twinkie was a little put out, but one step down wasn’t too bad. When Melissa traipsed off to Ricks College, Twinkie got demoted again and had to sleep with Michael, which was a larger blow to Twinkie’s ego. But at least with Melissa gone, Michael now became the next position down from the pack leaders. When Michael trotted off to Ricks, things got ugly. Brindle was already sleeping on Jonathan’s bed so Jonny wasn’t about to take in Twinkie. This meant that Twinkie got double demoted all the way down to William, the very bottom of the hierarchy – actually, just above Beta Fish II. Even after several weeks of counseling, Twinkie still couldn’t stand the idea of dangling at the bottom of the food chain.

Twinkie’s pride and self-esteem suffered a bit, but with even more counseling sessions and heavy doses of Prozac she worked through it quite well.

Every evening Twinkie would sneak into the master bedroom, jump up on the bed, and try to blend in with the bedspread. She thought that if she lay perfectly still, she would coordinate like a chameleon, with only her eyes moving as they followed TerriLu and me around the bedroom as we got ready for bed. She never figured out how I could suddenly spot her and scoop her up and cart her off to sleep with William when she was so cleverly incognito.

Oh, the inhumanity of it all. To have to sleep with William. Well, at about three o’clock in the morning Twinkie would jump off William’s bed and scratch at his door and whine until William got up and opened the door to let her out. Then she came over to the master bedroom door with the same scratching and whining routine. Sometimes I would just haul her back to William’s room with a good scolding, but usually she’d be back and I’d just let get on our bed.

If it was after 6:00 a.m. I would let Twinkie out and she’d follow me downstairs while I read the morning newspaper. If I wasn’t sharing any food, then Twinkie would head up to catch a quick nap with TerriLu. To sleep on the alpha bed, even for a short time, was still a small victory for Twinkie.

When we finally had to put Brindle down due to seizures, Twinkie became my shadow. Anywhere I went in the house, she followed behind me. If I left the house, she’d wait at the door for my return. And when William left for college, Twinkie again got to sleep with the alpha dogs. She sort of even took over second position ahead of TerriLu. Twinkie would snuggle between us, usually closer to me. If I got to bed before TerriLu, Twinkie would sometimes stretch out right in TerriLu’s place and then mumbled under her breath when TerriLu tried to move her over so she could climb into bed. Near the end of her life Twinkie had a collapsed trachea, among other problems, so she snored and wheezed and snorted and coughed quite loudly throughout the night. Sometimes it was too much for TerriLu who would then move to one of the guest bedroom’s to get a goodnight’s sleep. Triumph for Twinkie!

Strange, Curious, and Miscellaneous Canine Behaviors

On one of my business trips to Germany, I took TerriLu and Melissa along using frequent flyer miles. While in Germany’s Black Forest, we purchased quite a few wood carvings and coo-coo clocks. TerriLu also bought a large rocking horse that was beautifully carved. At home, Brindle was a bit bothered by the rocking horse. The horse’s face is very real looking and Brindle wasn’t sure if it was friend or foe. As a watchdog and sworn protector of the Ross pack, she barked vigorously and incessantly at the rocking horse for several days. Then the kids exacerbated the problem by petting the horse, talking to it, and pretending to feed it. Brindle realized this creature was not a threat to the pack but she was very jealous over the extra attention and affection it received from the other pack members, not to mention all that yummy food!

Whenever Brindle went into heat, she adopted several plastic, squeaky, chew toys as babies. She really mothered them. She gently set them in a pile of towels that she arranged as a nesting box. The kids got a real kick out of it and often moved Brindle’s “babies” across the room just to see her carry them back to the nest. If Brindle wandered and wouldn’t come when called, you could just “squeak” one of her babies and she’d arrive post haste to take over her maternal duties.

Brindle loved to chew on just about everything. As a puppy we struggled to keep her from chewing on chair legs, books, couches, blankets, and just about anything she could get her teeth on. She even enjoyed sucking on baby binkies or pacifiers, although this behavior was mostly brought on by the kids putting a binkie in her mouth.

One strange thing occurred in 1998 with Twinkie—she pottied in Melissa’s shoes. No one is sure what it means or I the family put it in that year’s newsletter but it was something to remember from 1998.

Half the time we paid Zamzow’s to groom Twinkie and half the time we trimmed her ourselves. Typically, when the hair on her head was too long for her to see through, I’d get the scissors and hack away until she could see – she looked like she got in a fight with a lawnmower and lost. When TerriLu clipped her, she did the body first and the head last so Twinkie looked like a Q-tip until the end of the haircut – embarrassing for Twinkie, but funny for us.

TerriLu and I used to go for walks in the morning, and, of course, the dogs loved to go along. TerriLu took Twinkie and I took Brindle. Before leaving we would let them out in the backyard to take care of their morning business. We always got them to go #1, but rarely #2. Out on the walk, the dogs would do just fine, but just when we’d reach the absolute farthest distance from the house, they would both poop on the sidewalk, but only if we had forgotten to bring cleanup bags. Somehow with their rudimentary understanding of trigonometry they would triangulate their position from the house to get the maximum distance so that after the walk I’d have the farthest distance to walk to go back to pick up their little indiscretion on the sidewalk. If I remembered to bring a cleanup bag, then the dogs either never pooped on the walk or they held it until just before we got home.

The boys discovered that Brindle loved to chase soap bubbles (the kind you make by blowing “soap” through the little plastic ring). Brindle raced around and jumped in the air trying to eat as many bubbles as she could. She always liked the taste of soap for some reason and she loved chasing and attacking balloons. Soap bubbles seemed to be the best of both worlds. The bubbles weren’t very nutritious but she enjoyed playing the game – to quote her again, “Any game is better than no game.” Brindle also loved to attack bubble pack, the air bubbles used for padding and protecting fragile items in packages. She pounced on them and bit them until she broke every bubble.

On one of our camping trips to Upper Payette Lake, soon after setting up camp, Brindle and Twinkie dared the kids to go on a hike up the steep hill next to the campsite. The dogs were just looking for a good excuse to run wild in the wild, wreak havoc in the hills, and mark it all as their territory, and so were the kids, so they accepted the dog’s dare. They invited Grammy, TerriLu, and me to go on the hike with them, but received no elderly takers. The aged folks got winded just thinking about scaling the near-vertical trail, let alone actually doing it.

So the kids and dogs took off without Grammy and Mom and Dad, and enjoyed their hike much more without the adults who, in between huffing, puffing, panting and complaining, would have told the kids to be careful and to not get hurt and to slow down and to not have any fun and to not pick the vegetation and to not let the dogs roll around in that horribly smelly rotting stuff they discovered on the side of the trail and to not pull back the branch and let it go so it smacks your brother in the head with a really cool thwacking sound and to not act like a bunch of kids even though they are a bunch of kids and to be careful and to not get hurt and to slow down and to not have any fun and to not run on the trail and to look out for this and for that and to not touch any plant that could be poisonous which means don’t touch any plant life at all just to be safe and to be careful and to not get hurt and to slow down and to not have any fun and to not let the dogs run out in the brush and to step over the logs not on them and to not make so much noise or you might disturb the other campers four miles down the road who just may have super-improved hearing aids that actually pick up sounds four miles away and to be careful and to not get hurt and to slow down and to not have any fun. Suffice it to say, the kids and the dogs had a much better adventure without the adults.

On the same camping trip, TerriLu and the kids paddled over to the island across the lake and even took the dogs. Twinkie has hated water ever since her first bath as a puppy. Brindle hasn’t trusted water since the day she saw a few ducks on a neighbor’s pond and she tried to run out on the surface of the pond to join them. The dogs were not too thrilled about being in a small vinyl raft, completely surrounded by water. They wanted to jump out of the rafts to escape, but they somehow realized they would have to go through the water to get away from it.

When they crossed back over the lake and approached the beach and the campsite, both hydrophobic dogs jumped into the water and headed for shore. Well, at least they tried to head for shore—they kind of just dogpaddled in place, possibly due to the shock from hitting the cold water. Since I was too cheap to spend money on dog swimming lessons for the dogs, they had to learn quickly to swim on their own. When it looked like Twinkie wasn’t going to make it to shore, Jonny bravely jumped into the frigid water, fully clothed, to rescue her. The wave from his splash gave Twinkie a push just about the time she figured out how to paddle forward. While the dogs didn’t care much for their harrowing experience, the rest of the family had a great time watching it.

The exciting news for the dogs in 2001 is that they both got spayed in November. Well, it wasn’t so exciting for the dogs, but they came through just fine. In fact, Twinkie seemed to be more lively and playful than she had been in years. Brindle also had two growths removed from her leg and paw. Fortunately, both were benign. During the surgeries the dogs had their teeth cleaned but they both still had bad breath. I tried breath biscuits, breath pills, and breath powder but nothing seemed to help—I’ve decided that dogs just have dog breath.

Speaking of dog breath, I had a college marketing professor who one day in class said, “They can market anything. Today I saw a commercial for a product to get rid of dog breath. Can you believe that? What will they think of next? Dog breath. Give me a break.” He then went on to point out that this was a perfect example of the pet rock from the 1970s when a marketing professor challenged a class to find any worthless object and he would market it, sell it, and make beaucoup bucks off of it. The students came up with a plain, old, river rock. The professor created a small box with air holes for breathing, put a little fake straw in the bottom of the box, and set the rock on the fake straw. He called it a Pet Rock and provided detailed instructions on how to care for it. He explained that it was already housebroken and that it knew how to “stay” on command.

To make a short story longer, my professor said, “See, you can market anything if you do it right. And it’s the same with this silly dog breath product. What dog ever needed fresh, minty breath? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of, except for maybe the pet rock, which is still just a river rock that’s been packaged to sell to a credulous public in a format that they will buy. And the dog-breath product has just been packaged to sell to the gullible public as well.”

And I believed my professor…until we got dogs. Yuck, did they ever have dog breath and not a single dog breath product assuaged any dog breath in the least. I would have paid triple the price to get clean-smelling dog breath but nothing ever developed has ameliorated the halitosis. I finally just gave up and learned to live with bad-breathed dogs. I loved the dogs anyway. Hey, there are other people in the family pack with bad breath and we’re loved, too. My marketing professor obviously had never owned a dog in his life.

Ever since we bought Brindle, Twinkie tried to assert her dominance over Brindle, even when Brindle weighed seventy-five pounds (after the neutering) and Twinkie weighed eleven pounds. In Twinkie’s glory years, when she outweighed the eight-week-old Brindle, Twinkie could physically push Brindle around, and let her know who was the boss. As a puppy, Brindle used to crawl under the couch to get away from this aggressive white creature that was much quicker than Brindle’s littermates and far more coordinated. Actually, Twinkie’s glory years only lasted only a few weeks because Brindle quickly outgrew Twinkie.

Lacking the physical advantage, Twinkie tried to make up for it with what she thought was a higher ranking in the pack. Twinkie got to eat first (mmm, yummy, dry dog food), and Brindle respectfully went along with it because there was always more than enough food for both. However, when it came to treats and human food, all bets were off. It was first come, first served—every dog for himself, or herself, in the case of Brindle and Twinkie.

Twinkie had a few other psychological advantages. She was allowed to get on any furniture in the house, but Twinkie egotistically thought it was because of her alleged higher status in the pack, when, in fact, it was simply because she didn’t shed. Brindle, who was a shedding machine, was allowed on the boys’ beds and the couch in Jonny’s room, and on the living room couch if a blanket was on the couch for protection.

Amazingly, the dogs seem to be omnivores. Of course, they could never get enough meat and junk food, but they also eagerly consumed carrots, peas, grapes, beets, and most other fruits and veggies, with the notable exceptions being cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, but then again, aren’t they exceptions for everyone?

From the internet I found an anonymous story: “An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard; I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of. He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep. An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out. The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks. Curious I pinned a note to his collar: ‘I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful, sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.’ The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar: ‘He lives in a home with six children, two under the age of three – he’s trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?’ ”

I received an email with another unidentified author’s work, as follows: “If you can start the day without caffeine; if you can get going without pep pills; if you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains; if you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles; if you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it; if you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time; if you can take criticism and blame without resentment; if you can ignore a friend’s limited education and never correct him; if you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend; if you can conquer tension without medical help; if you can relax without liquor; if you can sleep without the aid of drugs…then you are probably the family dog!”

Conclusion

So we love our dogs, and yes, they “say” and do the darndest things. They become part of the family and add a special and unique dimension to the human dynamics.

Brindle spent eleven and a half glorious, fun-filled years with us before she had to be put down due to a brain tumor and convulsions. For a large dog and a boxer, that’s quite a lifetime according to the veterinarian, who said Brindle must have been very much loved as a pet or, more precisely, a member of the family.

Twinkie lived sixteen and half years before we put her down. She was completely blind and deaf, couldn’t smell and began losing control of her bodily functions. She also had a collapsed trachea which made it extremely difficult for her to breathe. Twinkie, too, lived a long and full and happy life within our family.

Yes, Brindle and Twinkie truly lived to fill the measure of their creation for the members of our family. And they “said” and did things that will long be remembered and cherished.

A Traveling We Will Go

One summer the family accompanied me on a business trip to San Francisco where I needed to stay downtown at the upscale, high-rise Hilton hotel. We drove up to the valet parking area in the minivan and stopped next to a Mercedes Benz, a Jaguar, and several BMWs, all driven by very professional people dripping with diamonds and minks. There were quite a few stares when the parking attendant opened the side door of the minivan, and then quickly jumped back, as four kids tumbled out, clad in rumpled shorts and T-shirts, followed by fifty pounds of cracker crumbs, gum wrappers, red licorice, and wadded-up McDonald’s cheeseburger wrappers. Up in the Hilton room, I ordered out for pizza instead getting the expensive room service. The hotel was too sophisticated to allow a pizza delivery boy to ride up and down the elevators with pepperoni fumes pouring from a cardboard box. So the front desk called me to come down, past all the diamonds and minks and stares, to retrieve the pizza. After dinner, when it seemed like everything was under control, William had a messy diaper and TerriLu discovered that the diapers were still out in the minivan. I was about to improvise using a pillow case with the Hilton logo, but then changed his mind and ventured out to the parking garage to get the Pampers. The minivan had been valet-parked so it took me awhile to find the vehicle.

We actually love gallivanting around the western United States in the minivan. Some folks have wondered how we survive all those long hours cooped up in a car together without using sedatives and tranquilizers. Well, that is how we do it – we use sedatives and tranquilizers.

Actually, we have a system for traveling and we just pretty much enjoy being together. TerriLu and I sit up front, Melissa shares the middle seat with Michael, and Jonathan and William sit in the back. There’s an empty space between every set of two people sitting together which works quite well—the clothing from one child can’t even rub up against the clothing on another child, and hence, there are fewer altercations. Also, those who make the most noise are furthest from those who tolerate noise the least—Jonny and William just can’t handle Mom and Dad’s incessant yakking!

By leaving early in the morning, usually before 3:00 a.m., the kids sleep for a good portion of the trip, and about the time they wake up, there is always a McDonald’s just a few miles ahead. After eating breakfast and romping around the play land, the kids are able to sit for a few more hours. To pass the time, the kids talk, read books, sing songs, listen to my stories, color pictures, eat my junk food, listen to tapes, and sleep. TerriLu and I spend most of the time just talking together and lecturing the kids on keeping the car clean. I have driven some highway stretches so many times over the years that the car and I know most of the routes by heart. Between Ellensburg and Kennewick, Washington, for example, I can usually get in at least two hours of sleep, in spite of being at the wheel.

During one spring break, we drove to southern California from Seattle, Washington. On the way we saw the Pacific Coast in Oregon, stopped at the sea lion caves, ran up and down the sand dunes, walked in the Redwood Forest, and then spent two days at Disneyland. At Disneyland, the kids had almost as much fun on the rides as TerriLu and I did. On the second afternoon, as we all waited thirty minutes in line for the canoe ride around Tom Sawyer’s island, we noticed dark, ominous-looking clouds gathering above. Just as we paddled away from the dock, a cloud burst burst. Fortunately, we had twelve paddlers on board. Unfortunately, eight of the paddlers were shorter than their paddles.

In spite of the drenching, Disneyland was great. As we arrived home later that week, TerriLu and I asked which adventure the kids enjoyed most on the trip—the sand dunes, the Redwood forest, or Disneyland? We wondered if the two days and the money spent at a man-made fantasyland would outclass the two simple, but “gratis” mornings surrounded by God’s handiwork. And the voting result? A three-way tie – the kids couldn’t decide between the trees, the dunes, and Walt’s place.

(Hey, trivia buffs… The photograph for the front cover and back cover of Small Talk – Out of the Mouths of Babes was shot on the Oregon Coast beach on the above described trip).

To help with the long hours in the car on vacation trips, we bought a portable television with a built-in video-cassette player. In the olden days on family trips, when the kids asked, “When will we be there?” we would answer in unison, “In nine hours.” Five minutes later, a voice from the back, usually Michael’s, would ask, “Now when will we be there?” When the folks repeated the “nine-hour” answer, the voice in the back would squawk incredulously, “But that’s what you said last time.” This question-and-answer dialogue generally lasted eight hours and fifty-five minutes on a nine hour trip.

The TV-VCP changed all that. Now, when the kids ask, “When will we be there?” they only ask once because the answer is a very definite, “We’ll be there after The Little Mermaid, all three Star Wars movies, and Home Alone. Don’t ask again until the credits roll by for Macaulay Culkin and Joe Pesci.”

We should have patented that invention because now you can purchase portable DVD players and strap them to the front seat headrests using Velcro. And now automobiles come equipped with several flat screens in headrests and folding down from the ceiling each with a different movie playing.

I even constructed a multipurpose stand/organizer/VHS-tape holder with two shelves. A 2×10 formed the base/lower shelf, the sides, the upper shelf, and the top where the Costco TV rested. I used several bungee cords to strap the TV to the stand, and smaller bungee cords to hold the tapes in place on the shelves amid bumps and potholes. The entire contraption sat between the two front seats, held snuggly in place by the side seat cushions. The shelves boasted a library of fourteen videos. The librarian, Melissa, the oldest, was in charge of removing a single movie at a time for the entire viewing audience, inserting it into the player, and pressing the play button. The audience preselected the films through unanimous vote or simply by individual choice. Usually each child could pick at least two favorite movies for a total of eight movies on an extended trip (roundtrip).

TerriLu did have one complaint about the high-tech device that sat between the folks in the front seat and faces the four munchkins in the back. With minimal effort and a little cruise-control, I could lean back and sneak a few peaks at the backseat entertainment, which I felt appropriately reduced some of the monotony of driving those long stretches of highway. When TerriLu caught me, I innocently claimed that I was looking back to check that the kids were safely buckled in or that I was fondly observing the sweet, mesmerized faces of our offspring glued to Harry and the Hendersons. Of course, she didn’t buy it for a second, nor did she believe my I-was-just-checking-my-blind-spot-before-changing-lanes excuse, even when I was in the left lane.

On our many interstate jaunts, with me tooling down the interstate with the cruise-control set at 69 miles per hour, listening to Billy Joel on my Walkman, with Mom playing Tetris on the Nintendo GameBoy trying to get to the tenth level, and with the kids sitting glued to the tube watching the latest in video propaganda, the family really developed an appreciation for what the early Mormon pioneers endured as they trekked across the plains on their way West…. Well, maybe not!

To sum it all up, TerriLu and I and the kids do really enjoy long family trips – well, except for the 237 (465 by some reports) potty breaks. Actually, we don’t stop too often. Other than for refueling the car’s tank, we generally stop for only two reasons: to empty a full bladder or to fill an empty stomach, and at each gas stop, the latter is optional while the former is not.

After my first several business trips with HP, TerriLu and the kids excitedly met me at the gate in the Boise airport (we only had one car at the time so they had to drop me off and pick me up) – now they can’t even wait by the jet-way because of Homeland Security regulations. Soon the novelty wore off but they got excited when I arrived home – if I came bearing gifts. Not long after that they just said “Hi” when I came in the door. Eventually, when I’d walk in and say, “I’m back,” they would ask, “Were you gone somewhere?” Even the dogs hardly noticed my presence or lack thereof.

Memorable Holiday Moments

The Blakeslee family in Meridian had a surplus of pumpkins in their pumpkin patch one October and kindly offered one to each of the kids. Excitedly, the kids ran through the patch and picked out their very own pumpkins for Halloween.

Jonathan (age 2) found the biggest pumpkin in the entire pumpkin patch—Mom had to carry it to the car. Melissa (age 6) picked the biggest one in the patch – that she could still carry all by herself. Michael (age 4), who was still sensitive and a little melancholy because of a nose injury earlier that day, picked out a small, lop-sided pumpkin that was withered on one side. “Oh, wook (look) at this poor, widdow (little) pumpkin,” he said tenderly, “I will take care of it.”

On Halloween, the day TerriLu came home from the hospital following surgery, I busily tried to get the household organized. I carved pumpkins, fed kids, put on costumes, and helped TerriLu and the baby, William. Feeling like I had just about gotten on top of a rather hectic day, I announced, “Well, we’re in pretty good shape.”

Looking around at the piles of pumpkin seeds, the dirty dishes, and the general chaos, Michael (age 6) observed, “Yeah, but pretty much bad shape.”

The family was preparing the Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Melissa (age 3) stood on a chair at the counter busily smearing butter on the turkey.

“This turkey won’t bite me,” she reported confidently.

“Of course not,” Mommy pointed out. “It’s dead.”

“It is?” gasped Melissa, as she slowly backed away from what she thought was just a patient turkey allowing itself to be buttered.

Christmas was approaching and the family had been discussing how the kids might earn money to buy Christmas presents. Michael (5) had noticed how much cash Melissa (7) had raked in from the tooth fairy during the year and suggested, “Hey, I could knock out a tooth.”

For several weeks before Christmas each year TerriLu and I would buy presents. We would surreptitiously sneak the goods to our bedroom, and then hide them up in our closet while the kids were busy in the family room with a movie. As careful as we tried to be with our clandestine activities, the kids knew that we were hiding things in our room.

One year, with rumors running rampant in the house, I figured I better lay down a new house rule for the kids. The rule was short and to the point. “There’s no snooping around in Mommy and Daddy’s room,” I stated authoritatively.

“Yeah,” Jonathan (age 3) insisted. “This is how you snoop.” He then demonstrated with a dramatic “sniff sniff” and then added emphatically, “And we won’t do that in your woom (room).”

When Jonathan (age 8) had his friend, Brian, sleep over one night, they talked for a while before going to sleep.

“Do you believe in the Easter bunny?” asked Brian.

“No,” chuckled Jonathan knowingly.

“No,” agreed William (age 4), who was eavesdropping. “Because he doesn’t have a sleigh and he doesn’t have any reindeers like Santa Claus.” On a roll, he continued, “And he can’t go down the chimney. He just hops on the bunny trail and brings eggs.”

On the way home from church just before Christmas William (4) pointed out the car window at the Texaco gas station sign and blurted, “Hey, look! There’s a Christmas sign!”

“What?” TerriLu and I asked in unison.

“Well, it’s red and it’s got a star,” clarified William.

Jonathan (age 4) had placed five plastic dinosaur toys on the presents under the Christmas tree and I asked what they were doing there.

“They are protecting the presents,” he confidently assured me.

One afternoon Jonathan (age 7) sat at the kitchen table drawing a picture of some Christmas presents on a sheet of paper. William (age 3) wanted to watch but Jonathan felt that then William would know what his present would be. TerriLu tried to explain that William was too young to really comprehend what Jonathan was doing.

“Yes, huh!” argued Jonathan.

“I really don’t think he understands,” contended TerriLu.

“Okay,” declared Jonathan as he held up the paper for William to scrutinize, “what am I getting you for Christmas?”

William scrutinized the sheet for a moment and surmised, “Paper?”

For Christmas, the kids made ginger bread houses out of graham crackers, frosting, and candy. Jonathan (age 7) took a giant bite out of the roof on his house and then explained, “I made a sky light.”

As the kids were being tucked into bed after all the Christmas day activities, festivities, and goodies, Michael (age 4) told Mom, “We were really good today because we never yelled, ‘Hey, that’s mine and you can’t have it!’ “

Just an Ordinary, Extraordinary Dad

Anyone who really knew Dad, especially as his health deteriorated at the end, will know that he pretty much lived up to the saying:

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body,…but rather, to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, completely falling apart, and loudly proclaiming…“Wow!  What a ride!” Although, I think Dad might have demonstrated a little self-restraint by saying, “It is well.”

 

Dad was in poor health, and had been living with Doug and Colleen in Palm Springs, where he peacefully passed away last Saturday, May 28^th, 2005, at 12:58pm.

At the viewing in Everett, Washington, we displayed five items to represent various aspects of his life. There was a small statue of the resurrected Christ, Dad’s well-read and well-marked scriptures, a photograph of the family, a photograph of the Salt Lake Temple, and a small bowl of walnuts.

A few months earlier, before the stroke that left him bedridden, an insurance adjuster stopped by to look at some damage to Colleen’s car. Colleen didn’t want to leave Dad alone in the house so she helped him into his wheelchair and rolled him outside to sit on the sunny sidewalk while she talked with the adjuster. This was at a time when Dad could not always think or communicate clearly, but he did have his moments of lucidity. After the adjuster left, Colleen noticed Dad’s face illuminated. When she got Dad back inside, she asked, “Dad, are you okay?” He replied, “I just saw Mother.” Speaking in past tense, Colleen asked, “Was she beautiful?” He stated very clearly, “She is always beautiful” in a very eternal sense.

Two years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “I look upon my dear wife, soon to be 92 years of age. Her hair is white; her frame is stooped. I take one of her hands in mine and look at it. Once it was so beautiful, the flesh firm and clear. Now it is wrinkled and a little bony and not very strong. But it speaks of love and…faith, of hard work through the years. Her memory is not what it once was. She can remember things that happened half a century ago but may not remember what happened half an hour ago. I am like that, too. For 66 years we have walked together, hand in hand. It cannot be very long before one of us will step through the veil. I hope the other will soon follow. I just would not know how to get along without her, even on the other side, and I would hope that she would not know how to get along without me” (The Ensign, November 2003).

I think Mom and Dad felt the same way, and their relatively brief separation of one year and two weeks, wasn’t too long.

I should probably explain the walnuts. We considered displaying a stuffed squirrel or maybe Dad’s squirrel trap, but decided just to go with the walnuts.

Dad had a walnut tree in the backyard, but it seemed like the squirrels always gathered the walnuts before they were even ripe so Dad never got to enjoy them. Dad tried scaring the squirrels away without success. He didn’t want to hurt the critters, as he called them, but he wanted his walnuts.

So he bought a humane, live-animal trap. And thus in his retirement, Dad became a skilled, world-renowned trapper. Well, okay, skilled. Okay, he became a trapper. He captured many squirrels and relocated them to the woods near Mom and Dad’s house. Somehow the entire local squirrel population knew immediately when there was a vacancy at the Ross walnut tree, probably through email or instant messaging because new recruits always arrived. At one point, Dad concluded that the replacement squirrels were probably just migrating from the woods and he was recycling them. So he started driving them farther away—much farther away—like an hour away near Mount Pilchuck (this probably forever upset both forest’s ecosystems). Always within a day or two of eradicating the squirrels, a whole new pack of squirrels would move in, set up shop, and begin harvesting and stockpiling Dad’s walnuts.

This catch-relocate-and-release ritual was repeated many times over the years, many years, all to no avail. Ultimately, Dad just acquiesced and let the squirrels have the tree. I think it might even be in the will somewhere that’s it’s now officially theirs. In the end, I believe Dad actually grew quite fond of the squirrels, initiating a truce and making peace by feeding them a variety of nuts off the back porch. And this was so like Dad – kind and caring and considerate, even to the plundering squirrels who pilfered his walnuts.

I’ve always liked the saying, “When all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.” Not with Dad. While Dad, in fact, said a lot through talks and lessons, he did a lot more than he said. He didn’t expect anyone to do anything that he wasn’t doing himself. He taught by example—he practiced what he preached.

His heart was filled with love for everyone. I don’t think he ever met a person he didn’t like. He couldn’t even stay mad at the squirrels who ransacked his walnut tree. Dad loved his in-law children as much as his own children, understanding that the marriage covenant is just as thick as any blood relationship, if not, thicker. Once my wife, TerriLu, referred to herself as Dad’s daughter-in-law. Dad sternly, yet gently, corrected her, saying that she was his daughter, too.

 

Dad loved His Savior, Jesus Christ, and the fulness of His Gospel restored to the earth. When Dad was a boy, his father, William E. Ross, Sr., would make him go to the local Lutheran church each Sunday, although his father never went along. When Dad asked why he had to go to church, his dad said, “Because they’ll teach you some good things. When you’re older you can decide for yourself, but for now, you go to church.” Being a little cynical about religion, his dad would say things like, “Billy, go ask the minister this morning why God used to have prophets but he doesn’t today.” Or “Go ask the minister why God used to have temples and we don’t have them today.” Or “Go ask the minister what’s going to happen to all the people who never even heard of Jesus.” Or “Go ask the minister why God stopped revealing scriptures to his children on earth.” Dad dutifully took these questions to the minister, and the reply was always something like, “Those are the mysteries of God, Billy. We just don’t know why and we should never question the mysteries.” The minister probably breathed a sigh of relief when Dad was old enough to choose for himself and chose on his own to stop coming to church with all those questions.

During World War II, Dad enlisted in the army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. One day while traveling on a bus on an island in the Pacific, another soldier tapped Dad on the shoulder and said, “Something tells me I should get to know you.” They became good friends and it wasn’t long before they were discussing religion. And Dad was armed (pun intended) with a plethora of cynical questions like, “Why did God have prophets long ago but he doesn’t today?” And “Why did God have temples anciently but not today?” And “What happens to all the people who never got the chance to hear about Jesus?” And “Why don’t we have new scripture from God for us today?” You’re probably already ahead of me here – this soldier had genuine responses to Dad’s questions, and yes, this was the beginning of Dad’s conversion to the fulness of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, as he found real answers to his questions, actually, to his father’s questions.

 

Dad would strike up a conversation with anyone. He loved to meet people, everyone, any one, complete strangers. A few times he called us in Boise to say we might be getting a phone call from some people he met somewhere around Everett. They were going to be traveling through Boise next summer, and he had invited them to stay overnight at our place on their way through—complete strangers! Our response was usually an incredulous, “Daaad, you said they could what?”

But this charitable concept was not foreign to him—he lived the principles he taught. Once as the office manager, ironically, of Collins Casket Company in north Everett, he hired a consultant from out of town. When George Tucker (a part time minister in his church in California) arrived, Dad told him that he shouldn’t stay at a cold, heartless hotel at his own expense for two weeks. Instead, he should come and stay at our home. George Tucker did come to our home and our home went on as usual: Two family prayers a day, blessings on the food, family scripture study, Priesthood meeting, Sunday School, and Church each Sunday, and Family Home Evening on Monday night. A month later George Tucker returned to provide some more consulting having had four weeks to consider the many questions Dad had posed on the first consulting trip: Why did God once have living prophets to authoritatively declare, “Thus sayeth the Lord…” but today when the world needs the Word of God more than ever, we have no living prophets? Why did God have temples anciently but not today? What happens to all the people who never got the chance to hear about Jesus Christ, let alone accept Him as their Lord and Savior? Why don’t we have new scripture from God for us today?

And for 62-year-old George Tucker and his wife Lillian, this was the genesis of their conversion to the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

As a teenager on many early mornings I would poke my head into the living room to find Dad kneeling by the couch, saying his morning prayers. He was often in there for a long time. Somehow I knew that he prayed a lot about us as a family and about each of us individually, as well as others, including many who attended his funeral – he had served as Bishop of the Everett 1^st Ward, so many attendees knew him personally. It reassured me just knowing that Dad spent a lot of time on his knees in prayer. Dad’s family prayers were similarly thorough and prolonged. Some of us kids were known for giving relatively short family prayers, but when Dad started family prayer himself, we knew it was best to get settled in a comfortable position.

 

As I said, Dad taught by example. Once as a teenager I was helping him fix our garage door. This was back in the days when garage doors were heavy, solid, wooden structures that were difficult to open. To help you open them, they came equipped with giant tension springs on each side of the door, but it was still recommended that you use a hernia truss for good measure. Dad was working on the spring and my job was to hold the garage door in place, three-quarters of the way open. At one point, I thought the door was pretty much holding itself up by the spring tension. To test my theory, I let go of the door. It suddenly decided, on its own accord, to not hold itself up any more, with or without spring-tension. The edge of the door came down heavy and hard, right on the back of Dad’s head. He stomped around, not out of anger, but to take his mind off of the excruciating pain. As he rubbed his aching head, and once he was able to speak, he asked, “What happened?” I laconically, and somewhat truthfully summarized, “It dropped.” No swearing, no blaming, no chastisement, no lecture – nope, none of that from me because I just didn’t want to chew him out and make him feel worse. No, actually, even though I was clearly at fault, he didn’t say any of those things, but instead remained a great example of patience and self-control.

Incidentally, you knew Dad was really upset if he said, “Confound it!” That was about as close to swearing as he got. I understand the two words, “confound” and “it” but I still don’t understand know how they form a swearword derivative.

Once I heard Dad use the word “damn” while referring to a certain political party that I won’t name but it’s not Republican and the first letter is “D” and it ends with “emocrat”. I don’t think Dad was actually swearing at the Democrats. I think he was just describing what he thought would be their eternal state.

The other time I heard Dad say “damn” was in the garage. My younger brother, Jonathan, and I were honing our archery skills when we grew tired of the boring bulls-eye target. We noticed some brightly-colored oil cans resting on a 2×4 to the left of the round target. We thought that the yellow Pennzoil containers would make for vastly improved targets. So we removed the bulls-eye target from the wall and replaced it with twelve oil cans. With each strike we were rewarded with the ooze of oil with just the right viscosity. We did not notice that directly below our makeshift target was a wooden box filled with all of Dad’s expensive socket wrenches, pliers, files, tape measures, and screwdrivers. Dad happened to come down to the garage at just the right time. He inspected our handiwork and his now well-lubricated tools. He tried to explain the gravity of the situation to us. Nonplussed, we shrugged our shoulders in confusion. With a final attempt to reinforce his point, he said with controlled anger, “It makes me so damn mad when you boys do these careless, thoughtless things like this.” Whoa! There wasn’t even one damn Democrat in sight so he had to be talking about us and our situation. “Damn” definitely got our attention and we spent the rest of the Saturday afternoon wiping the Pennzoil from his toolset.

 

In my last year of high school, I planned to keep my job at the restaurant while attending classes at Everett Community College. One day Dad told me that he felt strongly that I must go to Ricks College. My teenage automatic resistance kicked in. His telling me to go to Ricks made me resolve all the more to not go to Ricks. A week later he came to me and said he was sorry for trying to make me go to Ricks, that I was old enough and mature enough to make my own decision, and he shouldn’t put any pressure on me. He said he would support me one hundred percent in my choice, whatever it would be. The next day was Sunday. In between meetings, I was walking across the gymnasium floor and right at center court, I ran into another young man my age. We chatted for a few minutes and then I asked him where he was going to go to college. He said Ricks College and then he asked where I was going. I thought for a moment as I glanced down to the right and then to the left. I looked up and said, “I’m going to Ricks, too.” And I ended up doing just that. He and I became roommates. And guess where I met the beautiful blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl that I would fall in love with and marry for time and all eternity? (For me it truly was love at first sight on September 3^rd, 1976). At Ricks College! The point is, that even though Dad was absolutely right about where I should go to college, when he tried to push me or one might say force me into going, I firmly resisted, maybe because that was the other plan that we fought against in the pre-earth life – forcing individuals to do what is best for them. Once he put the decision back in my hands, I made the right decision – my decision. I’m so grateful for his humility and his willingness to let me find important answers on my own and the lesson he taught that day.

 

Dad lectured quite often, something I didn’t always appreciate as a teenager. He even installed a large, green chalkboard on the basement rec-room wall so he could better teach us two-hour Family Home Evening lessons. When he started lecturing our children, I became a bit protective.

Several years ago our family traveled from Boise, Idaho, to Everett, Washington, to visit Mom and Dad (Nana and Grandpa). Soon after we arrived, I noticed that Grandpa had cornered Melissa, our young teenage daughter, in the sun room, and he seemed to be in a pretty deep discussion. After half an hour, I went to rescue Melissa, thinking that she was not ready for an intense, protracted lecture from Grandpa Ross. I made the excuse that Mom needed Melissa’s help in the kitchen with dinner. In the kitchen, I whispered, “I’m sorry about that Melissa – that he lectured you for so long.” Melissa cheerfully replied, “Oh, Daddy, it’s okay. Grandpa forgets that he’s told me his stories before and so when he asks me his questions, it’s easy because I know all the answers, and he’s very impressed and pleased that I do. Actually, I love listening to Grandpa and hearing stories about his father and his family, and I appreciate the time Grandpa spends with me.”

Melissa didn’t need to be rescued! I needed to repent! I was wrong – dead wrong! Dad was just fulfilling his role as a family patriarch with a grandchild, something far more important than anything he did in his calling as a stake patriarch. I can just picture Abraham calling Jacob and Esau over and saying, “Boys, have I ever told you about the time I bartered with the Lord to save Sodom and Gomorrah?” In unison, Jacob and Esau replied, “Yes, Grandpa Abraham, many, many, many times!” And without skipping a beat, Grandpa Abraham went on, “Very well then, boys, sit down, and I’ll tell you the story.… You see, about seventy years ago, Grandma Sarah and I were living in a small, upscale one-bedroom tent in the plains of Hebron with a nice panoramic view of Canaan right out the door of the tent…. One day the Lord appeared… and sat in the tent door in the heat of the day…” (Genesis 18:1).

And so Jacob and Esau sat and listened again to the same story and the same moral to the story, repeated for the umpteenth time with all the love and testimony that Grandpa Abraham had to offer, just as Dad often did for us and the grandchildren over the years. Jacob and Esau listened, partly because there wasn’t much to watch on cable TV four thousand years ago, but more importantly, they listened out of love and respect for their Grandpa Abraham, just as Melissa did for her Grandpa Ross.

 

When I was twenty-one, my older brother, Dave, helped me get set up as a painting contractor to earn money to go back to college.

In south Everett there is a large storage facility that borders Interstate 5, on your right as you go south, just before the Everett Mall. Many old-timers remember that the original color in 1979 was a bright, florescent yellow because, Mr. Holt, the owner, wanted it to be seen from the Canadian border, as he put it (over a hundred miles north). It has apparently changed owners since then because it is now a more subdued tan, and can barely be seen from Mt. Vernon (about forty miles north).

With my brother’s help, I won the bid. That’s the good news. The bad news is…I won the bid. It was essentially my first painting job and I had no experience with an airless paint-spraying machine. Dave even sprayed a little paint on the machine so it didn’t look brand-new.

I started on the far southeast corner of the facility, mostly because the workers from the site could not see me over there—learning how to paint.

The dirt fell steeply down the side, away from the building. I would set my twenty-foot and twenty-eight-foot ladders in the soft dirt and carefully ascend to the top of the first ladder, which almost reached the top of the wall. I would spray an area about five feet by five feet, then climb down a ways, and spray another similar patch. Then I’d cautiously sidestep over to the second ladder and repeat the process. Then I climbed down the second ladder, moved both ladders to the right, and started again. Each time on the ground I would look up at my little patch of slow-growing yellow and the huge remaining piece of gray, cement wall. I felt like Tom Sawyer, surveying that daunting task of whitewashing Aunt Polly’s ninety-foot-long by nine-foot-high fence, except my fence was a good three miles long and seven stories high, or so it seemed that day.

I was struggling to keep control of the ladders in the loose dirt. I was struggling with trying to spray using my left hand, as well as my right. I was struggling with balancing on one foot and leaning way out from the ladder to paint larger areas at a time. I was struggling with all the dirt accumulating in my shoes. I was struggling with everything. Following me around, two feet above my head was a dark and bleak storm cloud, ready to burst at any moment. I felt like I was on the edge of world and I was going to just slide off into the dirt-filled abyss and no one would ever know—years later some archeologist would unearth my bones and wonder how anyone could get that far into the Land of Desolation.

Later that afternoon, from the flat roof where I was mixing buckets of paint, I saw Mom driving into the parking lot. As a thoughtful, caring mother, she brought me an early dinner and was eager to hear how her son’s first day on the job was going. Oh, did she hear how her son’s first day on the job was going! I let it all out. I told her about my snail-pace progress, the unsteady ladders, all the dirt, and the ominous rain cloud that was following me, which surprisingly she didn’t see even after I pointed it out. After concluding with a dozen or so ways I might die or end up in the emergency room before nightfall, I forlornly said, “When Dad gets home, please send him over?” She said, “Well, he has church meeting tonight, but I’ll tell him.”

Despondent, I trudged back to my lonely spot on the edge of the earth. As I climbed the ladder, I dejectedly thought, “A high council meeting is always going to be more important than painting a storage facility, even a really bright yellow one.”

A few painstaking hours later, with a meager amount of additional yellow on the wall, I saw Dad’s car coming into the parking lot. It was quarter to seven. I thought he was going to wish me well on his way to church, or at least administer last rites – sorry, wrong church. Dad got out of the car dressed in his grubby clothes, not a suit. I thought things must be getting pretty casual over at those church meetings. I asked Dad what he was doing here, and he said he had called the stake president and asked if he could be excused from the meeting so he could help his son. Fortunately, the President Duce had a son, and understood.

When I realized that Dad was there to help, my spirits soared from the depths of despair at the edge of the earth to the very top of the world. The clouds suddenly parted, the sun was shining, bees were humming, sweet birds singing, and red tulips instantly sprouted in the dirt.

While I was girding up my loins and fresh courage taking, the wall of the building immediately shrunk from three miles long to a trifling 300 feet and from seven stories high to a mere fifteen feet.

Dad was there to help and help he did. We developed a somewhat hazardous system that saved a lot of time, but literally risked life and limb – mostly mine. Dad held the ladders firmly in place in the dirt so I could scamper up and down and between the ladders with reckless abandon. While I was painting from the top of one ladder, Dad would move the other ladder around me so I could just jump across to the next ladder instead of climbing down to move them both. Because Dad was steadying the ladders, I could risk leaping greater distances between ladders to paint bigger areas at a time.

By the way, this perilous painting technique atop rickety ladders is the kind of crazy thing that a dad understands and accepts because he was a boy once, but you don’t tell your mom about until much later -kind of like when boys go to scout camp. Some daring, death-defying, unauthorized Boy Scout activities, most of which include fire and/or dizzying heights, are not meant to be shared with moms because they would never let their boys go on another campout. What happens at scout camp stays at scout camp. If Mom had observed my precarious ladder-work with Dad’s help, I think she would have had a heart attack…a full two years before Dad had his in 1981.

And I am practicing what I preach here about not telling moms right away – a year after Mom’s death, at Dad’s funeral, twenty-six years after the events of that day, Mom finally heard the entire story. In the spirit world, she probably poked Dad in his spiritual ribs and said incredulously, “I can’t believe you let my precious little Billy do that? It’s a wonder he didn’t get to the spirit world ahead of us.” Yeah, like I had nothing to do with the choice to work like that.

Obviously, Dad and I were able to work much faster together than I could alone. But increased efficiency was not what was important that day. It would not have mattered if Dad and I actually worked slower together. What mattered was that a father was there when his son really needed him when his son could not rescue himself from the edge of the world. Dad could have given a thousand talks and lessons about service, priorities, or family, but all of them together could not have taught me, what he taught me, that day, by example.

While perusingDad’s personal, handwritten, and sporadically-written journal, I found his entry for Sunday, June 9^th, 1979. This is his concise perspective of helping me paint the building: “Bill started work as a painting contractor a week ago Friday. It was a large storage building 100 yards long. He was trying to paint the back wall from a sloping bank of dirt which was extremely difficult and time consuming. He was very discouraged and asked his mother to have me come help him. Later when I came home, I decided to go and help him. His joy and relief at seeing his father arrive was delightful to behold. I had a feeling this is typical of Heavenly Father’s relationship with us when we have exhausted our resources and turn to Him for help. When He helps us it is with much alacrity and gladness on His part.”

What a sweet entry that I will treasure forever, and what a beautiful analogy to our relationship with our Heavenly Father who is always ready and willing to help us.

A few years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley said to the husbands and fathers, “Let us not live a life…that would bring regret…. It is not going to matter very much how much money you made, what kind of a house you lived in, what kind of a car you drove, the size of your bank account, [or] any of those things. What is going to matter is that dear woman who has walked with you side by side as your companion…and those children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and their faithfulness and their looking to you…with respect and love…and kindness…. The only thing you will take with you, when all is said and done, is your family relationships…. God bless us to be good fathers…and good husbands to our good wives (from leadership training meeting, Pleasant Grove, Utah, January 18, 2003, Church News, week ending May 7, 2005, page 2).

Dad would echo those words today. He would have us know that he and Mom are so overjoyed to be together again, and that “she still is and always will be beautiful” and what he thought was a long and arduous separation of a year and two weeks was hardly an instant in eternity. Indeed, even a hundred-year lifetime is but a blink of an eye in eternity.

And so today, at a memorial service, we take a few minutes from our busy, frenetic lives to reflect on what is really important in eternity, amidst work, church, school, shopping, play, recreation, and so many other activities and distractions. What really matters most? Hopefully, we’ll ponder the things of eternity and commit ourselves to living just a little bit better today than yesterday and a little bit better tomorrow than today. We’ll go home and show a little more kindness and patience to our spouses and children, learning to appreciate them here and now. That’s what Dad would have us do.

Last week I learned the best answer I’ve ever heard to the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Happy!”

Dad is happier now than he’s ever been and he wants us to be happy today and every day, “until we meet again.”

 

Hunting Big Game in the Great Outdoors

In Bothell, Washington, at least half a dozen squirrels frequented our backyard foraging for food. In the process each year the intrepid little creatures tore up most of TerriLu’s strawberry plants, dug up and ate the newly planted seeds in the garden, stripped the apple tree of every apple, chewed off TerriLu’s pretty flowers from their stems, removed all the tomatoes from the vines before they ripened, dug small pot holes all over the lawn in order to bury their treasures for later, and every so often they dragged two-year-old William off and over the fence. For some time, TerriLu and the kids tried scaring them away, but the impertinent little hooligans just snubbed their furry noses at the huge humanoid figures making all those funny sounds and frantic gesticulations.

After checking with the county pest control department, I found that squirrels were considered varmints, pests, and nuisances, much like mice or rats. A few years earlier I had successfully eradicated a few pesky mice in the garage, and with that distinction on my résumé, I mentioned to TerriLu that we could try shooting the squirrels with the pellet gun. Of course, the kids thought that was a nifty idea, especially the boys. To them, it sounded like such a cool, macho thing to do. TerriLu sort of shrugged but with the support and urging of the kids, I made ready for the hunt.

Aiming the pellet gun was no easy task for me with three enthusiastic boys crawling on my shoulders, arms, and legs all shouting advice and encouragement three inches from my right ear. After detaching the assistants from my appendages, I explained some of the finer points of hunting and the necessity of my needing to have minimal movement in order to accurately aim the pellet gun. So they calmly and quietly waited while I finally got the squirrel in the pellet-gun sights. And then the kids egged me on. “Come, on, Dad! Go for it! Shoot it! Come on, Dad! You can do it!” Again, I had to stop, this time to expound the finer points of full concentration and also not scaring off the intended target with excessive noise. This time the boys waited patiently while I took careful aim with the varmint perfectly in my sight. I gently squeezed the trigger and a moment later the squirrel was flopping around in the beauty bark. Surprisingly, the squirrel waited patiently for his execution in the front lawn despite the cacophonic preparations.

“Hey, Dad, what’s wrong with him? What did you do to him? Daaad, why did you do that? That’s mean! Dad, how could you do that to him! Daaad, fix him!!” Yeah. Right, kids! Now it’s all Dad’s fault.

I had to use a shovel to crush the critter because the pellet did not do its requisite work.

To smooth things over the family conducted a small funeral service for the nameless squirrel, (the autopsy confirmed he was not related to either Chip or Dale, or Alvin, Simon, or Theodore). Michael (age 8) provided the heart-rending eulogy, Jonathan (age 6) offered a short word of prayer, Melissa (age 10) added the tears and sobbing, William (age 2) wondered what the lugubrious fuss was all about, TerriLu (age 29 – give or take) stayed in the kitchen, and I buried the little guy in the garden near his beloved strawberries.

Over time the story has grown into folklore. Unreliable witnesses, namely my Hewlett-Packard colleagues at work, who, incidentally, were nowhere near the neighborhood when the hunting expedition took place, claim that I donned Army fatigues, painted camouflage on my face, hauled out a small bazooka, and then stalked this cute, cuddly, furry, helpless, innocent little creature for hours before blowing it away. Legend even has it that I smeared peanut butter on the end of the barrel to help lure the poor, unsuspecting, trusting, little bushy-tailed rodent into point-blank range.

What started out as an innocent act of service to protect Mom’s garden plants turned out to be, if nothing else, a learning experience for everyone. The kids found out they like hunting about as much as I like it—not very much. My aversion to hunting probably stems from a boyhood experience on my brother’s farm. One day my brother elected me to shoot the chicken that we were going to eat for dinner. Somehow that left a sour taste in my mouth, not for the chicken, but the senseless act.

So once again the little critters were left to roam the great expanse of the backyard and carry on with their awesome responsibility of extirpating the strawberries, the apples, the flowers, the tomatoes, and the lawn. But at least William has grown big enough that they couldn’t abscond with him anymore, at least not without help from Melissa, Michael, and Jonathan.

Darth Beta: May the Fish be with You

One evening I took the three older kids, Melissa, Michael, and Jonathan to Petco next to the Boise Towne Square Mall to get some dog food. On the way, we mused about how fun it would be to surprise William, age seven, with an early Christmas present: his very own pet. William had mentioned that he wanted a pet of his own because Melissa had Casey, her cockatiel, Jonathan had Brindle the boxer, and Michael sort of had Twinkie the poodle.

I suggested maybe getting a goldfish because of the upside that they’re only14 cents each, in spite of the downside that they don’t live very long. I reasoned that even if we had to buy a replacement goldfish every two weeks, it would only cost $3.64 per year for twenty-six fish, or less if William lost interest sooner.

We discussed just getting a barebones system: a goldfish in a jelly jar—no air-bubble pumps, no sunken pirate ships on the bottom, and no colored rocks.

At the pet store we checked out the fish section. Sure enough, there was a 55-gallon fish tank loaded with 14-cent goldfish. We asked the young clerk if she could get a goldfish and asked if putting it in a jelly jar would be okay.

“Actually,” she replied, “you need a bigger bowl for goldfish because they get bored.”

Yeah, right, I thought. What are you suggesting? We hook up a TV with cable so the goldfish can watch Flipper reruns and The Little Mermaid? And just our luck, the fish will one day lose the remote and manually turn on the TV while still in the water. He’ll be electrocuted and we’ll have a fried goldfish and a very sad William.

“How come those pretty purple fish are in those little, clear-plastic drinking cups?” I asked. “They don’t seem to be getting bored in their confined quarters.”

“Oh, they cost more than a quarter,” the clerk replied. “Those are beta fish and they don’t get bored. They do fine in small containers and they live a lot longer than goldfish, like about two years. But they cost $3.00 each.” That sounded like a reasonable investment compared to the goldfish and all the required trips back to the pet store to get replacements. “Of course,” she continued, “you need to get this plastic fish bowl with a lid because beta fish can jump out. The bowl with the lid is on special right now for $2.00.

“But,” I pointed out, “you don’t have lids on these little cups.”

“Yes, but we know how to keep the fish from jumping out.”

“But…”

“Oh,” she continued, “you’ll need to get some dried blood worms to feed your beta fish. They don’t eat fish flakes.”

“How much are dried blood worms?”

“$3.50 a jar.”

“You know, my wife will love having dried blood worms in the house.”

Not responding to my comment, she deadpanned, “Do you have soft water?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll need this additive for $4.00 a bottle. Add a few drops whenever you change the water.”

“What if we just use hard water?”

“You’ll still need the additive.”

Well, to bring home a pet for William, I thought we would need 14 cents, some water, and a jelly jar. Instead, we needed a second mortgage on the house.

But it was worth it—William was ecstatic! Like Jonathan did with Brindle the boxer puppy, William wanted some private time to bond with his new fish. William affectionately named his beta fish, “Beta Lu Ross” taking the middle name from Grammy (Nancy Lu), Terri Lu, and Melissa Lu, thus making “Lu” a four-generation middle name. I preferred the name, “Darth Beta” but it was William’s fish to name. So Beta Lu lived in the bathroom on the counter in her plastic fish bowl with a lid so she couldn’t jump out.

After school one day, Jonathan had a friend over to play. His friend noticed Brindle, the rambunctious boxer, mostly because she was jumping all over the friend and slobbering on him. “Oh,” he remarked, nonplused, “you’ve got a boxer.” He then asked if he could use the bathroom. When he came out, he blurted, “Wow, you guys have a beta fish!!”

Several months later we took a trip to see family in Seattle and William had the neighbor fish-sit Beta Lu. When we returned to Eagle a week later, TerriLu and Melissa noticed that Beta Lu looked a little different. They checked with the neighbors who said that the fish had died and they felt so guilty they went to the pet store and bought a replacement. We should have told them that if the fish died, not to worry. William probably wouldn’t have noticed since TerriLu and Melissa usually changed the water once a week.

We explained to William that Beta Lu had died, which didn’t faze him in the least, and that this was a new fish, which William happily and creatively named Beta Fish II. Sadly, that year, Beta Fish II also died. The autopsy confirmed that Beta Fish II had probably been “floating” for a day before anyone noticed. William just thought the fish was doing the back float or the backstroke. Jonathan deftly pointed out that the Beta Fish II may have been practicing the back float when he had a bad stroke or was doing the backstroke when had had heatstroke.

At any rate, Beta Fish II received an honorable burial at sea. More precisely, he got flushed down the toilet. And, unlike Disney’s Nemo, he’ll never really make it out to the real sea so a nondescript septic tank in Eagle, Idaho, will have to suffice.

Canine Economics 101 and 102

When our dogs studied at Dog Obedience School, they apparently took an extracurricular class in economics. They clearly grasp the basic concepts of supply and demand, where the value of a product is inversely proportional to the supply of that product. That is, an overabundance of a product pushes down the value, while scarcity of a product drives up the value.

Case in point… Most dog owners only feed their dog once a day and they watch in a matter of minutes as the dog wolfs the down food (pun intended). Dogs are essentially domesticated wolves and wolves are essentially scavengers and scavengers must devour things quickly before a fellow pack member impolitely invites himself over to help wolf down the food. With the dog food coming only once a day, it appears to be in short supply and therefore has great value and must be ingested quickly.

One meal a day is one way to feed dogs—it’s quite efficient. It’s a little more difficult when you have two dogs in the same house, especially when they come in two drastically different sizes and temperaments. Our boxer, Brindle, tips the scales at a bone-crushing seventy pounds, swallows most food items whole, and disposes of any leftovers on a standard-sized plate with one massive swipe of her colossal tongue. At the other end of the spectrum, our dainty miniature poodle, Twinkie, weighs in at a petite eleven pounds, never eats with her elbows on the floor, and always uses a napkin.

In our home, we do not feed the dogs once a day because Brindle would scarf everything down before Twinkie could even get her napkin out. Instead, everyday we fill the dog-food dish with generous amounts of Zamzows dry, geriatric lamb-and-chicken-based dog food—mmm, mmm, good! For most of the day, the dog food sits in the dish, always available, always in plain sight, always in copious amounts, with an adjacent stock of dog food stored in a plastic container for easy distribution—the distribution channel being one of the four principles of marketing that the dogs have not yet studied. With the dog food in ample supply, Brindle and Twinkie see very little value in it, and so it sits patiently in the bowl, waiting to fill the measure of its creation.

Once or twice a day we hand feed the dogs dry—really dry—dog biscuits. These “treats” feel and look like cardboard, and being the connoisseurs of cardboard that we are, we have determined that the biscuits are pretty much “tasteless.” However, because this treat is rare—as in rarely available, not rare, as in barely cooked, although, for all intensive purposes, they seem over baked—the dogs place considerable value on this bone-shaped indulgence. Unlike the dog food, we do not keep a box of these biscuits in eyesight of Brindle and Twinkie. But they have correctly surmised that a stockpile of biscuits sits in the garage just outside the utility-room door. To quote from the canine economic textbook: “Biscuits, while significantly substandard in flavor, are appreciably more desirable than fat-filled dog food because the biscuits are in short supply” (Economics for Canines, ©1997, McGraw-Hill, NY, NY, page 31).

Several times a day, Brindle whines and moans and paws at the floor, as if, like Lassie, she’s trying to tell us that little Timmy is lost in the woods and she knows right where he is and we need to follow her posthaste or before nightfall little Timmy will die of dehydration, hunger, hypothermia, exposure, or all of the aforementioned, or worse yet, he will fall prey to some carnivore in the woods and we will have blood on our hands. Not wanting blood on our hands, we get up from wherever we are sitting while Brindle bounces up and down and leads us to the door to the garage, confident that we think we are on a rescue mission for little Timmy who is apparently lost in the garage. It is, in fact, possible to get lost in our garage, not because of its immense size, but because I work hard to keep it cluttered. Once it took my wife a week to find me when I ventured off alone to acquire a measuring tape from the tool box, and neglected to leave breadcrumbs in the path to find my way back. Once a neighborhood child wondered in through our open garage door and was never heard from again. But I digress….

In the garage, we have large biscuits and small biscuits for Brindle and Twinkie, respectively. Even though Brindle’s biscuit is four times larger than Twinkie’s, Brindle still consumes hers first because she is over six times larger, by weight, than Twinkie. Also, Brindle tends to swallow just about anything without chewing and it hardly even grazes the taste buds. So even though she hardly tastes the biscuit—or if she did and she found, to her chagrin that it tastes like over-baked cardboard—she still places high value on it, because it appears to be a luxury item in short supply. To quote again from the canine textbook on economics: “To make something more desirable, dog owners make it more difficult for dogs to obtain” (ibid., page 143).

And so in the mind of the canine, the world of economics is alive and well and crucial to survival.

 

Twinkie obviously paid more attention in her Microeconomics class at Dog Obedience School than Brindle did because she takes the economics of biscuits to a whole new level. Twinkie carries her biscuit around with her, letting it stick out of her mouth like a cigar, while Brindle, our hulky boxer, gulps hers down in one swift swallow. Then Twinkie lies on the carpet with her micro-sized biscuit in front of her nose. If Brindle comes over sniffing for a small “Twinkie” biscuit or even just crumbs, Twinkie carefully extends a possessive paw to partially cover her biscuit—lowly and little, yes, but still available for my consumption. She then sneeringly sings, “Na, na, na, na, na, na. Even though mine is smaller, at least I still have one.” (Okay, so Twinkie isn’t much of a lyricist or a singer). Quoting directly from the textbook on canine economics: “The scarcity of one tiny, untasty, over-baked, cardboard-like dog biscuit goes up significantly in value when placed between two dogs” (ibid., page 278, emphasis included in the original text).

Scraps from the table or from meal preparation are even better than dog biscuits because while they are about as rare as biscuits, they have significantly improved flavor, including a variety of flavors. When we first bought Twinkie, my boss at work, Bruce, advised me to never feed Twinkie during meal preparation or from the dinner table. That way, she would never know that there is something delectable to eat when you are in the kitchen. She would never associate the activities or the smells of the kitchen with anything that tastes better than biscuits or dog food. He also added that if Twinkie would just eat the dog food in the bowl, she would be much healthier, would never beg for food, and would never know what she’s missing. Bruce mentioned an associate at work who always feeds his dog mega-doses of people food. On Bear’s birthday, the watch Rin-Tin-Tin reruns together or some other dog movie, and the birthday dog gets to eat a hefty, medium-rare steak and a two-layer birthday cake. The dog is constantly throwing up, basically, at both ends.

So for Twinkie’s health and wellbeing, as well as the health and wellbeing of our DuPont carpet, and our sanity, the entire family agreed to never hand feed Twinkie anything. We strictly enforced this rule with the kids. Of course, she was so cute and looked so deserving that I, the alpha dog of the family pack, felt it was within my pack leader executive privileges to occasionally sneak her a few extras from the table. It didn’t become too much of a problem until we got Brindle. Boxers are droolers and can slime an entire pant leg before you can gasp, “Oh, yuck, Brindle! Look what you did to my pants!”

Brindle though is very patient. While Twinkie squirms and whines and dances in circles in anticipation of a table scrap, Brindle patiently and quietly sits to my side. Sometimes she will park herself there and just drool from her saggy jowls—the thick saliva looks like stalactites growing slowly from her mouth until they reach to the floor. At other times, she scoots in and still sits, but rests her entire jaw on my thigh, sliming my pants in the process.

Having stuck to the original rules agreed upon by the human members of the pack, TerriLu and the kids never share any food with Brindle or Twinkie so anytime I’m in the kitchen they just park their carcasses beside my chair and wait for me to drop something to the floor (that’s the dogs parking their carcasses by me on the floor, not TerriLu and the kids).

When I’m loading the dishwasher, the dogs know that scrumptious stuff occasionally hits the floor. When my back is turned, they know they can usually sneak a few licks from dirty plates that are stacked in the dishwasher. I often just put the plates on the floor and let the dogs lick them clean. I don’t even have to wash them because, amazingly, when the slobber evaporates, I can place the dishes in the cupboard, and the family and guests can’t even tell the difference from a dishwasher-washed plate (just kidding, TerriLu).

Not surprisingly, when I’m unloading the dishwasher, the dogs just go and snooze in the living room. Brindle and Twinkie have learned that never, ever, in their entire lives, has a single scrap of food ever fallen from a plate coming out of the dishwasher—it only happens when the plates are going into the dishwasher. One final quote from the canine economics textbook: “When dishes are being extracted from the dishwasher, go to the living room, stretch out, and sleep” (ibid., page 323).

So we see that dogs indeed possess a rudimentary understanding of economic principles, although it will probably be several decades before a canine chairs the New York Stock Exchange or Federal Reserve.

Altercations and Aggravations

The Ross home has had its share of problems arising from weekly chores, sibling rivalry, misunderstandings, and household work. The kids enjoyed work about as much as going to the dentist, and they enjoyed gently teasing each other almost as much as going to the amusement park. Some difficulties were minor while others have gotten the family in an uproar.

One Saturday afternoon in Meridian the kids (Melissa (age 6), Michael (age 4), and Jonathan (age 2)) were in the back yard playing around. I could see by the wind blowing the trees and the clouds rolling in that a storm was coming so I announced that playtime was over. I started barking orders to the kids to clean up their toys and get everything back in the garage, but they kept playing and the more they played the louder I barked. I started getting a bit upset and started making all kinds of threatening encouragements, all to no avail.

About the time my eyes started dilating and my teeth began grinding, my wife, TerriLu, came over and cheerfully suggested, “Hey, kids. Let’s pretend we’re Little House on the Prairie and a big storm is coming and if we don’t get everything inside the barn, it will all be blown away and destroyed.”

I started to say, “Honey, that’s really cute but you can’t get work done by playing a game.” But before I could get the sentence out, everything was put away, the kids were in the house eating dinner, and I was left outside with my rain-soaked foot in my mouth.

A few years later, TerriLu was changing baby William’s messy diaper in the bathroom just as the kids were finishing their baths. She looked around at the toys floating in the tub, the wet towels heaped in the corner, and the combs, toothbrushes, and other items in complete disarray on the counter. Since she was busy with William, she tried to enlist a little help.

“Michael,” she suggested, “anything you can do to help in here would really be appreciated.”

Without even glancing at the toys, the towels, or the counter top, Michael noticed the pungent diaper odor and on his way out the door he helpfully switched on the ceiling-fan vent.

One Saturday morning while the TerriLu and I were working in the yard, Michael (age 3) kept running through the beauty bark. And I kept saying, “Michael, don’t run through the beauty bark.” After he went through for his tenth time and I gave my tenth warning, I felt it was time to get the point across. I wasn’t angry but I wanted Michael to obey.

I got down to Michael’s level and looked him right in the eyes. “Michael,” I said firmly, “you need to stop running through the beauty bark! I’ve told you at least ten times to stop! You’re ruining the plants and the beauty bark and you need to stop now!” I was sort of pleased with the way I was handling the situation, just like I was taught in my organizational behavior class to discuss things with children in a mature, adult-like manner for better results. I finished up my lecture by sternly warning, “Michael, you will be in trouble if you run through the beauty bark again!”

With tears welling up in his eyes Michael gently asked, “But, Daddy, what’s beauty bark?”

So much for the child psychology. At least Michael felt safe enough to ask for clarification.

One spring while planting a garden TerriLu found it was not as easy as the instructions on the seed packets made it sound. Of course, the instructions didn’t account for two two-year olds wanting to play in the dirt and mud. TerriLu kept removing Jonathan and his little friend Tyson from the tomato area that she was working on. At one point, Jonathan’s foot got stuck so deep in the mud that he couldn’t walk. He fell face first into the mud, crushing a tomato plant in the process and when TerriLu picked him up, his little tennis shoe was left stuck in the mud.

Just then Tyson toddled over, took his own tumble in the mud, and crushed yet another tomato plant. TerriLu finally just had to set the two of them over on the lawn completely out of the garden area. Before long the boys discovered the hose and how to turn it on. By the time TerriLu got to them, their shirts were as wet as their pants were muddy and right about then TerriLu realized that toddlers are of most help planting a garden when they are taking naps.

One day William, age four, came in the house sobbing and TerriLu could tell that he was genuinely sad about something. There’s an obvious difference between an affected cry to get attention and true tears of anguish. “What’s wrong, William?” TerriLu asked with genuine concern. “Are you hurt?”

“No!” wailed William. “Jonny left on the spaceship without me!”

After probing for a few details, TerriLu discovered that a few minutes earlier Jonathan, age eight, had “flown” the swing set into outer space and apparently William was not onboard the other swing at take off. In spite of William’s desperate pleas, Jonathan kept swinging farther and farther away, and absolutely refused to fly the ship back to Earth to pick up William.

TerriLu quickly found some light-speed-space-travel candy which she had been saving for just such an occasion and they enabled a happy and speedy William to instantly catch up to Jonathan who was swinging light-years from home somewhere out in the Milky Way.

Fine Family Dining

When our kids were young we took them to McDonald’s restaurant on a semi-regular basis, especially on long trips. Twice we took them to fancy sit-down restaurants specifically designed for people with proper manners and not for kids under the age of four. After the second experience I vowed never to take the family to a fancy restaurant until our youngest child was at least six years old.

When Jonathan was our youngest at age three, Michael was five, and Melissa was seven, we decided to eat at a nice Chinese restaurant in Meridian. Jonathan was fascinated by the brightly colored yellow mustard that came with the pork strips. He begged to taste some and try as we might, we could not convince him that the mustard was very hot and would burn his tongue. He was certain anything that pretty had to taste good.

After a rather heated discussion (no pun intended) that got no one anywhere, we decided to let him drink a cupful for good measure. No, we put a small drop on a teaspoon. He complained that he wanted to taste more than a drop. We compromised that if he tried that drop and liked it, he could try a larger quantity. Jonathan eagerly licked the beautiful yellow drop of hot Chinese mustard and immediately started wailing that his mouth was on fire. We tried to extinguish the fire with water, soda pop, rice, pork, sweet-and-sour chicken but nothing worked. Jonathan went from wailing to crying then screaming as we tried to cool off his mouth.

Eventually, with enough miscellaneous ingredients and sufficient time, his tongue began to cool down and the wailing settled down to a whimper while his trust in his parents increased exponentially. Aside from the other patrons of the restaurant who thought we were torturing our son, we got through the ordeal without any permanent injuries.

Once while driving back to Boise from Seattle, we stopped at a sit-down restaurant near Pendleton, Oregon. When the server stopped at our table, Melissa, age 4, looked up and innocently asked, “Are you a girl or a boy?” Honestly, we couldn’t tell either but we knew better than to ask. As the parents, being somewhat familiar with Melissa’s childhood accent, we understood exactly what Melissa said. The server asked Melissa what she said and we quickly jumped in and interpreted, “She’d like a kid’s meal.”

One great memory from the year 2000 is when Michael went to pick up some take-out Chinese food for the family. He set the box filled with the food on top of the car so he could get his keys out of his pocket. He then got in the car and drove half way home before he noticed the usual aroma of sweet-and-sour chicken was not filling the car. In fact, the sweet-and-sour chicken was not even sitting on the seat next to him. He stopped the car and checked the roof, only to find that the food wasn’t there either. Immediately, he realized that someone must have stolen the food off the roof so he headed back to the restaurant to see if he could apprehend the crook.

On the way, strewn along the road he noticed the sweet-and-sour chicken, the chow mein, the egg rolls, the fried rice, and the fortune cookies. Obviously, fearing capture, the crook must have disposed of the evidence while fleeing the scene of the crime. On his way back, Mike scooped up the box, the food, and the cartons, being careful not to collect too much gravel, and took the meal home. The family didn’t suspect a thing. In fact, we thought the extra crunchiness was a complimentary culinary plus from the Eagle restaurant. No, actually, I just reordered the meal and Michael went back for a second trip. This time he made sure he put the food in the car before departing.

In addition to the loud crying and fussing in restaurants, the kids seemed to drop half their food on the floor. The table and floor looked like a miniature twister had blown across our table.

At home the food-on-the-floor problem was mitigated by the dogs who virtually cleaned up all the leftovers dropped on the floor. They learned to park themselves right by the highchair with the youngest child serving up extras to them, sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose. Twinkie, the miniature poodle, knew that when the smallest child was out toddling around, it was best to keep her distance because the baby would try to sit on her, pull her ears, and poke her in the eye. Brindle, the boxer, at seventy pounds didn’t care if all the kids piled on her all at once. Twinkie understood though that in the highchair, the child was somehow confined and couldn’t hurt her, and very likely would drop tasty tidbits of food off the tray. So she would even stand on her hind legs and try to get the scraps that had fallen on the baby’s lap.

So for the most part, we deprived our kids of the privilege of eating at fine dining establishments until they were old enough to eat and behave properly. However, we received numerous thank-you cards from many restaurants expressing their appreciation for our consideration.

Booga-Booga!

One day Melissa, age five, was sitting on Uncle Richard’s lap when he asked her what game she enjoyed the most.

“Playing with a Rah-Rah,” she exclaimed.

“What’s a Rah-Rah?” inquired Uncle Richard curiously.

“An ugly monster,” replied Missy nonchalantly.

“What’s he look like?”

“My dad!” blurted Melissa.

The Rah-Rah game is actually a variation of the game of hide-and-seek. Melissa and Michael, age three, would hide and I would seek. When I found them, I would chase them, and tickle them. I progressed from merely “seeking” the kids to stalking them like a tiger, complete with the “roar” of a big cat.

Michael loved playing the game as much as Melissa, but he could not articulate, “Dad, can we play the Daddy-searches-for-kids-while-roaring-like-a-tiger-and-then-snarfs-them-down-when-he-finds-them game.” Instead, Michael just imitated the noise the monster made by growling, “Raaah! Raaah!”

The first time Michael emphatically roared, “Rah-Rah” I didn’t understand. Michael kept roaring, and finally I asked Melissa to translate, as I often requested since Melissa understood “Michaelese” better than Mom or Dad.

“Oh,” explained Missy simply, “he wants to play the Rah-Rah game. You know, where you’re the monster and you roar and you come find us and then eat us up.” For sake of time, the tickling dropped by the wayside.

After that, the game was simply called Rah-Rah.

The Rah-Rah game eventually evolved into another game: Booga-Booga. Boog-Booga is sort of the opposite of Rah-Rah, but with the same ugly monster. In Rah-Rah, the kids would hide and I would seek, while in Booga-Booga, I would hide and the kids would seek. The kids found it more exhilarating to have me hide while they tried to find me. It added suspense because as they stealthily hunted they never knew when the Booga-Booga might jump out at them.

Sometimes when they thought they had found me, they suspiciously stated, “Daddy, we found you.” If there was no movement, they cautiously poked at the heap of clothes on the floor, the pillows on the bed, or the coat hanging in the closet until the Booga-Booga leaped out. They would run away shrieking as the monster chased them to their “safe” place, where they then waited for him to hide for another round. Even gobbling up the kids fell by the wayside, because it wasted too much valuable hunting time. The kids just wanted to get back to stalking the Booga-Booga.

And where did the name “Booga-Booga” come from? It was actually Jonathan’s way of saying “boogie man” when he was three. Over the years the kids developed a penchant for hunting the Booga-Booga at night using flashlights with all the lights off in the house. The kids banded together, moved in a little pack from room to room, and pointed their flashlights at suspicious-looking hiding places. As they searched through closets and under the bed in a room, they called out, “Booga! Booga!” and the Booga-Booga, who was usually off hiding in another room, echoed, “Booga! Booga!” That drew the kids out into the hallway to search where they thought they heard the voice originated. They continued listening to determine the Booga-Booga’s whereabouts and they just kept on hunting until they found him.

The kids discovered that when they were getting close to the Booga-Booga, he no longer responded with “Booga-Booga.” When he was silent, the apprehension escalated because they knew they were closing in and that at any moment the Booga-Booga could pop out of nowhere. He’d be growling and they’d be running.

One day the kids didn’t want to wait until dark to play Booga-Booga so they played a daylight round in the afternoon. As the kids waited downstairs, the Booga-Booga searched for a respectable hiding place. With all the light in the house he struggled to find anything that would not be immediately obvious to the experienced sleuths. Finally he enlisted Mrs. Booga-Booga’s help to really trick the kids.

Mrs. Booga-Booga slid the window open in the boys’ bedroom while the Booga-Booga opened the office window and removed the screen. He climbed out on the roof, and then replaced the screen. He could now scamper back and forth on the roof between the office and the boys’ room. The kids came upstairs and checked first in the master bedroom with a chorus of “Booga-Booga.” From outside the boys’ window, the Booga-Booga answered, “Booga-Booga.”

“He’s in your room!” shrieked Melissa, as she and the boys flew down the hallway and into the boys’ room. While they carefully explored the room, the Booga-Booga cautiously slipped across the roof and from outside the office window called, “Booga-Booga!”

“He’s in the office!” screamed Michael, as they scrambled back down the hallway to the office. The Booga-Booga quietly switched to the other window and called again.

“He must be in my room!” blurted Melissa, as they tore out of the office.

The Booga-Booga called again, still outside the boys’ room, and Michael shouted, “No, he is in our room!”

Once they were back in the boys’ room they heard a “Booga-Booga” coming from the office again. By this time they were getting confused, but they still ran to the office where their ears told them the voice originated. Then they heard the voice back in the boys’ room. As they scurried past the Booga-Booga’s wife who was standing in the hallway, Michael furrowed his brow and said gravely, “Mom, something’s not right.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Mrs. Booga-Booga innocently.

Michael didn’t bother to answer because he was too busy running to his bedroom to capture the most elusive Booga-Booga he had ever encountered. Once again the Booga-Booga had escaped and once again he called from the room they had just checked.

“How’s he doing that?” gasped an exasperated Michael on his way down the hallway for the hundredth time.

The game finally ended when Michael unexpectedly entered the office just as the Booga-Booga called through the office window. The Booga-Booga drew back from the window, stood flat against the outside wall, and hoped Michael hadn’t discovered his secret. However, Michael shouted excitedly, “I found you!”

“But it was a great hiding place!” conceded the Booga-Booga as he gave himself up at the window. Little did he know that Michael was on the floor searching under the desk directly below the window, totally unaware of the real hiding place outside the window.

“So that’s where you are!” wheezed Michael as he stood up.

“Oops,” sighed the Booga-Booga realizing then that he had unnecessarily given up his secret.

But it was still the most fun the Booga-Booga and the kids ever had playing Booga-Booga…until they were teenagers and invited some innocent, unsuspecting friends over for the evening…

Years later the Booga-Booga carefully explained the rules of the game to the newcomers. He then separately instructed the experienced players, enlisting their support for a complex variation on a well-played theme. He added a scary Halloween mask and black cape. He slowly explained his strategy as he walked them from room to room. He was to hide in the first upstairs’ room’s closet. The kids were to purposely lead their trembling friends (who surprisingly have still remained friends over the years), to Melissa’s bedroom…

Back downstairs the larger group of willing participants waited while the Booga-Booga climbed the stairs and added his costume. Safely crouched in the TV-room closet, he softly called in his most enticing voice, “Booga-Booga.”

The tribe eagerly ascended the stairs, turned left, and headed for Melissa’s bedroom, carrying their flashlights like swords. The Booga-Booga crept to the game closet that shared a wall with Melissa’s bedroom. Improvising, the Booga-Booga scratched the closet’s back wall with his fingernail. He heard the shrieks and he quickly got to his prearranged position outside the bedroom door.

As the band cautiously moved toward the door, he stepped forward and growled, “Booga-Booga!” Sixteen-year-old Keith dropped involuntarily to his knees.

Minutes later, downstairs in the debriefing session, Keith admitted, “I almost wet my pants when you scratched the wall.”

So if you’re ever looking for something dreadfully fun to do, consider a round of Booga-Booga! Or maybe you should ease into that with a few rounds of Rah-Rah!