(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 5th, 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 100,000th 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.
Small Talk with Bill Ross 