Dogs have always been a part of my life, and I was sort of raised by dogs, if you want to know the truth. Before I was born, my parents got a puppy from the animal shelter and raised him, and he was my first pet, there for me until I was 7 years old. His name was Kaiser.
Dad always named our dogs after great military figures or famous people. All the dogs we had that came form the pound were given grand names: Kaiser Wilhelm, George S. Patton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great. In later years when Mom started buying Bassett Hounds they got less grand names like "Baby" and "Molly."
My grandfather [Mom's father] always named his pigs after English royalty; he was Scotch-Irish so that isn't surprising.
I digressed.
Kaiser was Mr. Personality, and he was part of the deal my parents made before marriage. Mom gave Dad an ultimatum, saying he should either propose and get lost. She wanted kids and dogs and he needed to understand, there would be no negotiation.
Their first "baby," Kaiser was so special that my mom wrote a story about him, years ago. This story appears in my memoir, Talking Back: Stories of the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years.
"He would let the children walk on him, pull his tail, chew him, bite him, hit him, take food out of his mouth - he put up with all of it, up to a point. When the children got to the stage where they could walk unaided, he would spank them with his paw when they got abusive. He never really hurt them, or bit or growled. But every now and again, I would hear one of the children yelling "Kaiser HIT ME!"
One day when Bruce was toddling, but less than a year old, Tony heard Kaiser in the next room making a noise like he was going to throw up. Tony ran in there, and Bruce had his entire arm down Kaiser's throat. Kaiser wasn't protesting, he just lay there quietly gagging. Kaiser was trying to eat a bite of dog food, and Bruce wanted it."
Whenever one of my parents put my brother or me in the baby carriage and walked outside with us, Kaiser would watch over us, and he was strict.
"One day when Bruce was an infant, Tony had him parked in the baby carriage outside. Our neighbor Jack Sneed had a big boxer, named Boots. Tony had gone into the middle of the yard for some reason, and left Bruce in his carriage over by the carport for a moment. Tony wasn't really concerned about Boots - he was a friendly dog, and Bruce was safe. Boots trotted over for a peek at the baby carriage. Kaiser was nowhere in sight.
Kaiser saw Boots, and decided Boots was getting too close to his baby. Kaiser suddenly appeared, rounding the corner in a dead run, and blindsided Boots, knocking him straight up into the air. Boots got up, stared at Kaiser in amazement, then ran back to his house as fast as he could go. Kaiser went over to Tony and looked up at him as if to say, "I got that SOB, didn't I?" He then swaggered over to the baby carriage and sat by it protectively."
When Kaiser died after being hit by a car, we were all sad. It was the first time experiencing death, for me and my brother. We had a cat named BC who we adored, but we needed a dog, so Mom got another one from the pound, a mutt we named George S. Patton. George lived outside, in a very nice custom-made doghouse my grandfather built for him, and he was very nice but not really a cuddly dog. We always brought him inside on cold nights but he wasn't happy about it, preferring to chase the birds and squirrels in our backyard.
[right, George with Mom, my brother and me on our boat, The Miss Dee]
George loved going to the lake with us. We had a tiny cabin on Douglas Lake in East Tennessee and we went up there every weekend in the summer. He rode in the boat, chased birds, and was good about sticking close to the house. There were no leash laws up there.
We would depart our suburban split-level house on Friday afternoons, the boat behind the old Chevy Impala, and me and Brother in the back seat with the dogs, Mom on the front seat with our cat BC in a large picnic basket. We always stopped at a little country store and bought snacks, and George always got an Almond Joy candy bar. [Vets didn't tell anyone not to give a dog chocolate, back then.]
We still had George when Fred came into our lives.
I was 12 years old and listened to a radio show every night. One night the DJ was giving away puppies! I asked Mom if we could have a puppy and she said "Ask your father." Dad was downstairs asleep on the couch. I asked him and he grunted, not opening his eyes. I told Mom he had said yes. Then I entered the contest. I won! Late that Friday night a man appeared at our front door. Mom and Brother were behind me when I opened the door and the man thrust his hand towards me, and in it was a tiny puppy that looked like a rat. We named him Fred. Mom said later the DJ's dog must have gotten pregnant and he didn't want the puppies so they were giveaways.
[left, my brother in college, with Fred]
Fred was a great dog. He was big and furry and obviously had a lot of German Shepherd. He was very good tempered. One day at the lake, Dad was in our little jonboat and took a sharp turn to avoid a log, and fell out. Fred sat there regally for about 15 minutes until the boat ran out of gas going in circles.
Fred adored pizza, and when my parents lived on Melton Hill lake in the 1980's they were so far away from town that Dad had to go and pick up pizza. Fred was always given the crusts. It got to where Dad would walk in the door carrying the pizza box and Fred would walk over to the table, sit beside it, and drool a big puddle long before he got his first piece of pizza.
Once on Valentine's Day my father brought my mom a box of candy, a Whitman Sampler. The lid was not easy to remove. They left the box on the coffee table, and when they came back the entire box was gone. They found the box in the guest bathroom with all the chocolates - - and their wrappers -- missing. Fred ate the entire box except for two pieces! Mom called the vet, worried, but after a day or so of indigestion he was fine. He probably weighed 80 lbs. then.
We had a lot of Bassetts over the years too, but they deserve their own blog.
I miss our last one, Lola, who passed away a couple of months ago. Life is so much richer with dogs. They are the personification of Love.
#dogstories, #funnystoriesaboutdogs, #talkingbackstories, #thedogwhoeatscandy, #thedogbabysitter
