Category Archives: Dogs

May 10, 2013 · 0:00

Untarnished

No matter how old we are, when we’re sick we want Mom.  When we hurt physically, that’s who we call out for.  When we have been wounded emotionally, we want her more than anything.

Several of my bloggin’ buddies asked me to repost this piece for Mother’s Day.  I am delighted to grant those requests.  Because one of the best things about writing is that it lets you bring back folks you miss, hold them again, and let them know that you love them.

I love you, Mom.  And thanks for being such a nut.

*     *     *

My Silver Lining

Thursday, November 22, is Thanksgiving in the U.S.  It is also the 30th anniversary of the surgery I had for what was then thought to be severe ulcerative colitis.  It was a difficult time for me, but one for which I will be thankful for on Thanksgiving and really every day.  Yes, I got my health back as a result of the surgery, but that wasn’t the best part.

The most important part, the silver lining, was that I got to know my Mom, and it started a close relationship that lasted for the rest of her life and that I will feel grateful for for the rest of mine.

Mom was the sweetest woman on the planet.  My friends adored her.  Our house was always open to hoards of kids.  We lived near the beach, and it was convenient for everybody to just hang at our house.  But it was more than that. For years dozens of teens used our house as their home away from home.  There was always room, always plenty to eat, always a welcome.  No one was ever turned away, and the answer to “can So-And-So stay the night” (or “the weekend” or in some cases “the summer”) was always “sure.”

But we weren’t close, Mom and I.  I was Daddy’s girl from the start.  Mom, well, I loved her.  I even liked her, mostly.  It’s just that there wasn’t a whole lot about Mom to make me respect her.  She was completely helpless, you see.  Hopelessly so.  I can’t stand that and never have been able to deal with dependent people.  And “helpless”?  That was Mom in a nutshell.

She didn’t drive.  She didn’t shop without Dad.  She didn’t go for a walk alone.  She didn’t try to take control of family problems and help figure out how to solve them.  She waited for my dad to get home to reprimand, make a decision, to blow her nose, or so it seemed.  She was utterly and totally dependent upon my Dad.  It was incredibly annoying to this girl growing up in the late sixties and seventies during one of the strongest pushes for equal rights for women.  My friends’ mothers were out protesting the Vietnam War.  Mine didn’t even vote.  They burned their bras; Mom ironed hers.  They voiced their opinions ever more loudly.  Mom looked to Dad to indicate which way was up.

After I left home and became more self-sufficient, my irritation at Mom’s inability to do anything without Dad’s help, grew.

So when Mom announced, just weeks before I was to have radical, difficult surgery, that she was going to come to help, well, I panicked.  She was going to help me?  Yeah right.  Her announcement sent me into apoplexy.  It was the worse possible news heaped on a whole ream of really shitty news.  Who the hell was going to help her?

I lived with my roommate, Keily, and my 120 lb. alcoholic German Shepherd, Goliath, in a tiny Washington, DC, townhouse, in a not terribly safe area.  I was sure that Mom would get mugged — she’d make an easy target.  I feared that she would let the dog out and they would both die.  I drove a battered and temperamental VW Bug with a stick shift that Mom didn’t know how to use.  And of course, I wasn’t going to be able to help her because I was going to be recovering from having my guts totally ripped open and reorganized.

I couldn’t believe she would do this to me.

At the same time I couldn’t hurt her feelings and tell her that I didn’t want her.  Nope.  I could never have done that.  Not if my life depended on it.  Which of course, it might.

But once she dropped that bomb, I stopped worrying about the surgery, about the recovery, about everything except how I would take care of my caretaker.  Thankfully, my brother Fred came to help too.  He could drive my car; he could help with Mom for the week he took off from work.  My roommate, Keily, was a star, too.  (That’s a whole different story.)  But Mom came for what was a very long recovery, 2-1/2 months, so felt like I’d be pretty much on my own in taking care of her.

It wasn’t long after she arrived before I realized that Mom without Dad was a different person.  Dad loved the caretaker role, and she was happy to let him play it.  Without Dad, Mom had opinions on stuff, could make decisions and could give savvy and sage advice.  I decided quickly that maybe she and I were related after all.

And as soon as we got to the hospital, I was incredibly glad she was there.  I was admitted and headed up to my room, sending Mom and Fred to get settled in their hotel.  It was about dinnertime, which didn’t matter to me; I’d been on a clear liquid diet for about a week.  And while I was starving, I knew I couldn’t eat.  I had my instructions from my doctor:

(1) Do not eat;

(2) Continue taking your medicines just like you are now;

(3) Show up to the hospital.

Always pay attention to the details when your guts are on the line.

Now Hopkins is one of the best hospitals in the country and it was also one of only two places in the country where the operation I was to have could be performed.  The surgery was brand, spankin’ new – just a smidge beyond experimental.  It was dangerous.  It was highly specialized.   My doctors were to take out my large intestine, rearrange what was left of my plumbing so that things worked normally, and close me up.  Two surgeries were involved – they had to give me a colostomy (ewwww – a bag) in between the two surgeries while my innards healed.  Only 100 of these surgeries had been done in the world.  I was my surgeon’s 7th.  I was scared shitless which is saying a whole lot for a girl with bowel trouble.

But when I got to the hospital, everything went wrong.  They tried to insist I eat; they tried to give me the wrong medicine; they forgot about me and left me hanging out in my room where I fell asleep for several hours before someone wondered who I was.  The grand finale came when two nurses wheeled in an EKG machine, hooked me up and turned it on – and the machine started smoking.   The nurses, trying valiantly not to laugh, had to quickly unplug it and get it out of there.

“MOM!!!!”

I called her at her hotel in a complete panic, hysterical.

“I am not going to have this surgery.  What kind of a hospital is this?  They can’t even get an EKG machine to work.  It was smoking Mom, SMOKING!!!!  I’m not.  I’m not. I’m not.”

How is it that Moms know just how to calm down the most hysterical daughter?  I was and she did.  And she didn’t need Dad one little bit.  Yup, she calmed me down, and then, I heard later, called the nurses’ desk and chewed them out royally.  I’m pretty sure that was the first time she’d ever chewed anyone out.  But she wasn’t going to let anybody or anything upset her daughter or get in the way of the surgery that her daughter desperately needed.  And whatever she said worked.  Nothing else got screwed up.  They paid attention to her daughter.

In fact, Helpless Mom became SuperMom.  She corralled doctors when they didn’t come in a timely manner, she sweet-talked most of the nurses and they seemed to come around more and more often as they laughed and joked with Mom.  She was on a first name basis with all the residents and interns, knew if they were married, where they were from.  They got a little bit of mothering whenever they came into the room, and she charmed the lot of them.

She was always full of laughter, encouragement and fun.  Except when her sixth sense told her that I was feeling sorry for myself; then she’d tell me to stop sniveling.  Sometimes I needed that.

Back at home, she was great too.  She found the grocery store and walked to and from, lugging bags of food.  She fed me and Keily, gave beer to the dog, helped me get upstairs and downstairs.  Helped me do many things that were totally disgusting.  She helped me be independent again.  We laughed our way through Christmas together and then my birthday in January.  We laughed for two months, barely coming up for air.  We talked a whole lot, too, about everything.  We became fast friends.

There is one incident though, that made me realize that I’d never really known her before.  Could this crazy woman really be my Mom?

We’d driven my VW to Baltimore for a pre-surgical checkup before the 2nd surgery, scheduled for the 9th of February.  It was late January, and there were several inches of snow on the ground.  On the way back home, the VW died in the center lane of a busy highway.  I managed to coast to the side of the road, where the bug sighed once and died.  Shit.  I was still not at my best, and the promise of a long snowy walk was not a pleasant one for either Mom or me.

But a blue Honda Civic two-door driven by a big burly guy pulled up along the roadside next to us.  He rolled down the window and asked if we needed a lift.  I was about to explain that my car had just died and would he please call a tow truck, when, well, Mom jumped into the back seat! I stood there with my mouth flapping. Because I could hear her voice from my childhood talking in the back of my head:

NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGE MAN.

THEY ARE ALL RAPISTS

But there she was, the woman who taught me never, ever, to get into a car with a rapist — she was in the back seat of a stranger/potential rapist’s car.  WTF?????  What the hell was she doing?

I didn’t know what else to do, so I got into the front seat.  And there on the floor was something else that shocked me:  A  teddy bear with a green t-shirt that said “I’m Going To Steal Your Love.”

“Wonderful,” I thought, “a rapist with a sense of humor.”

As it turned out, the guy wasn’t a rapist!  He took us to a reputable garage where they agreed to tow and fix my damn car.

But the adventure wasn’t over yet — we still needed to get home.  The hotel across from the garage had a shuttle bus that went to BWI Airport.  From there, we were told, there was another shuttle bus that could get us back to DC.  It sounded perfect.

Perfect except for the fact that we had hardly any money left  The shuttle to DC only took cash.  No credit cards.  No beads.  No chickens.  Cash.  Shit.

We didn’t have enough for the fare, and couldn’t have come up with any more money.  But that didn’t stop Mom.

She walked up to the shuttle driver and chatted her up.

“Do you think you can let us both on for $16.50?”

“Sorry M’am, the adult fare is $10.”

“What’s the child’s fee?  I mean, after all, she’s my little girl.”

The driver let us both on, shaking her head and smiling at Mom.  Feeling like she’d done a good deed (she had).

Mom was there for my second operation, and then she headed home with Dad who had come up for it.  When he arrived, Mom didn’t just let Dad do everything as she always had before.  She showed him around — showed him her turf.  She had realized that she really liked feeling in charge, and doing things on her own, for herself and for me.

For the rest of Mom’s life, she and I had a whole different relationship.  I had always loved her, always liked her.  But her care for me, and her resourcefulness and sense of duty and just plain fun let me develop a respect for her I’d never had.

I’ve always felt lucky in a way to have had these health problems.  Because they gave me my Mom.  I would never have known her, never have laughed with her so very much.  I wouldn’t have heard the stories of her life, told with love and humor, the way she did everything.

*     *     *

On Mother’s Day, I will raise a special toast to Mom, my SuperMom.

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Filed under Bloggin' Buddies, Childhood Traumas, Dogs, Family, Health and Medicine, Holidays, Humor

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May 8, 2013 · 0:00

Boots on the Ground

Today I got quite a surprise.

I was going through emails listing all of my new faux followers when I found what looked like it might just possibly be that there was a real person with a real blog who was really actually interested in following my blog!

Could it be true?

There was only one way to find out.  Yup, you guessed it.  I clicked on the link to one of what Word Press said was one of her best posts.

And it was good!  It was funny!

So I had to steal from it!  Because she showed one of the funniest dog videos evah:

 

So thanks to my new blogging buddy, Jennie of Tip of My Tongue for letting me steal this when you hardly even know me.

I had to share it, because I tried to put booties on Goliath my alcoholic German shepherd, on Charlie, my Bernese Mountain Dog, and on Cooper my English Springer Spaniel.  They all got upset when their feet were/are cold.

But did they appreciate my efforts?  Did they think I was the smartest Mommy in the pack?  Did they so much as thank me?  No.  All three of them reacted the same way, and far differently from the doggies in this video.  My dogs all ate their booties.  That was funny too, but alas, there is no video.

 

 

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Filed under Bloggin' Buddies, Dogs, Humor, Pets

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March 16, 2013 · 0:00

Dogs and Other Nuts

You’ve already met my psychotic German shepherd, Goliath.  The one with the stupid name and the drinking problem.   The manic of a dog I was crazy to take into my life.

As you can probably guess, from the moment I put him in my car that first night, all life immediately revolved around Goliath.  Morning, after-work and evening walks became a ritual.  It was good for my health, which was otherwise pretty crappy.  It was good for my psyche, which was also not tops.  It wasn’t so good for some of the other dogs at the park, though.

Mostly outside Goliath was quite friendly, he liked to play with other dogs.  He made many doggy friends, and their owners liked him too.  But more often than I liked to admit, Goliath listened to his darker angel:

“Gotta bite a dog.  Gotta bite a dog.  Gotta bite a dog NOW!”

He would then race across the park towards his would be victim, dragging me behind him shouting:

“No!”

“Stop!”

“Heel!”

“God Damn it — STOP!”

Goliath was about 18 months old when I finally admitted that something had to be done.  When I knew I had to “fix” the problem.  When he pissed me off so much that there was only one solution:

I had to cut off his balls.

Yup.  Castration.  Dr. Jane, Goliath’s vet, had been telling me to neuter him for months.  Carlos, Goliath’s dog trainer told me to do it, too.  The owners of Goliath’s ‘frenemies’ suggested it less politely.

But I’d never had a neutered dog before.  It seemed harsh.  Cruel.  Unfair.  Plus, I’d always hoped for grandchildren.

Of course I read about what happens to a dog after-balls.  I learned that neutering lowers a dog’s testosterone level – makes him less likely to act like Rocky Balboa at the park.  Less likely to fight with other dogs.  And way less likely to drag me in front of a bus while rushing to attack another dog.  All good things for me.  But for him?  Not so much.

I learned that it’s best to neuter your dog at about six months of age.  But six months was right after I brought home my traumatized, abused dog!  It just didn’t seem nice to turn around and say:

“You’re home now.  Nobody will ever hurt you again.

Oh, except when I cut off your balls.”

And really, I empathized.  I was young, unmarried, childless.  I didn’t want anyone to neuter me.  So how could I do it to my best friend?  I just couldn’t.

At least not until he ticked me off once too often.  (I’m telling you, do not mess with me.)

Goliath

You want to do WHAT?

We were at Lincoln Park one night for our after-work walk, when Goliath got that urge to fight.  I struggled to hold him, to keep him away from the other dog, to make my maniac behave.  He didn’t.  He wouldn’t.  It took all my strength to keep him from hurting that other dog.

That was it, the last straw.  I’d had enough.  It was time.  And feeling very much like Alice’s mad Queen of Hearts, I made the decision –

“Off with his balls!”

Goliath and I arrived at the animal clinic that Tuesday.  Unfortunately it was our regular vet Dr. Jane’s day off.  A young vet I hadn’t seen before called my name and led Goliath and me into an examining room.

Handsome vet

(Google image)

I have to admit, I was embarrassed.  Dr. Jane was a woman, and, well, I’d hoped to be discussing my dog’s testicles with her — with a woman.  Instead, here was this handsome young guy who I had fallen for immediately.  And rather than flirting with him, there I was talking to him about castrating another man – hardly the best way to get a date.   My heart sank knowing that my chances with the handsome vet were being nipped in the bud.

Dr. David quickly sensed my discomfort.  He knew I was wavering on getting Goliath fixed.  He could tell that I was about to chicken out and change my mind.

“He’ll be fine,” said the vet, looking Goliath over.   “It’s very routine.  He won’t even notice the difference.  But you’ll be much happier with the results.”

Of course I couldn’t look Dr. David in the eye.  Because naturally I was wondering if he would notice if someone cut off his balls.  I was pretty sure he’d notice.  He didn’t seem like the type of guy who wouldn’t.

“Now, I don’t know how much you know about this procedure, but there are actually two different ways of doing this.  We can either castrate him completely –basically cut off his testes — or we can drain the fluids inside.  That has the same effect.”

“Drain them?” I said hopefully.

“Yes, we essentially drain him, lowering the testosterone to a more manageable level.  It’s less radical, less risky.  Dog owners are often more comfortable with this procedure.  Now which of those options do you think makes the most sense for this big guy?” he said, looking Goliath right in the eye.

“Draining them sounds much better,” I said, feeling relieved.  I was feeling so good, in fact, that I could actually look Dr. David in the eye again.  They were deep blue …

And so I left Goliath with Dr. David and what I envisioned to be some sort of sterile syphon.   I no longer felt even a smidge of guilt.

You know what?  Even doing the procedure late helped.   After the surgery, Goliath was less interested in killing other male dogs.  From time to time one of them really ticked him off and led me to believe that those sacks hadn’t been completely drained, after all.  But the newly drained Goliath was a huge improvement over the old testosterone-filled maniac.  For the rest of his life he was considerably less aggressive.

The draining also left him with his pride.  A smidge of flesh in between his legs to chew on.  It eased my guilt — after all, they’d only drained some fluid from him, and doctors and vets do that sort of things all the time.  Goliath was still a man.  He kept the semblance of his balls.  He still had something to chew on.  He was still alpha dog. I had not turned him into a pansy.

In the intervening years, I married John, a man who quickly became devoted to Goliath.  A few years later, when we had all moved out of state, I took Goliath to a new vet.  Goliath was then about nine years old –getting up there in doggy years.  The poor old guy was having problems urinating and needed some attention.

But when I gave the new vet, Dr. Joe, the rundown of Goliath’s health history, I got an unexpected lesson when I mentioned to the man how Goliath had been “fixed” at 18 months.

“I don’t know if it makes any difference, but I should probably tell you that you know, Goliath wasn’t actually ‘castrated,’ he was ‘drained.’”

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah, at the time the vet said that either they could castrate him, ummmm, cut off his, ummmm, testicles, or drain them.  I chose to have him ‘drained.’”

I’m pretty sure that all of Dr. Joe’s medical training in delivering disturbing news culminated in this one moment with me.  Every cell in his face solidified so that there wasn’t even a hint of a smile.

“Ummmm, Ma’am?”  he said without so much as a hint of humor,  “There is no such procedure in veterinary medicine.  We don’t “drain” the dogs.  We surgically remove the testes.  All that’s left is the skin.”

“Oh,” I replied.

I’ve never told this story before.  Somehow, I bet both vets have.

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Filed under Dogs, Family, Goliath Stories, Humor, Pets, Stupidity

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March 9, 2013 · 0:00

OneOhFive and Counting

Using the telephone when you live in a country where you don’t speak the language is daunting.  You know each time that you’re going to look like an idiot.  You can’t resort to the pointing and grunting to make yourself understood that you do in person.  Instead, you’re left sounding like a moron; it’s inevitable.

Normally for me looking like a dork is not a problem.  Since that’s how I look frequently, I make the best of it.  I even enjoy it more often than not.  And those experiences often become my funniest stories.

But when you make an idiot out of yourself because you can’t communicate, it’s different.  If you can’t laugh with the person who witnessed it, well, it takes the fun out of it.  All you’re left with is feeling like a lonely idiot.

Knowing that humiliation would follow, each and every time I picked up the phone in when we lived in French-speaking Switzerland, my heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach while my pulse rate and blood pressure soared.  I was on my way to the Idiot Zone.

And that’s just how I felt when I picked up the phone to call dog breeders. We’d opted for a pure bred puppy because we had a little kid (Jacob was 6) and because my husband is a lawyer and thinks that he can research things and know what he’s getting into.  Yeah right.

Anyway, in early 1998 we needed a puppy.  I needed a puppy.  My son needed to grow up with a dog since he had no siblings and needed someone to talk to.  John got to choose the breed:  An English Springer Spaniel.

That morning as always, I looked at the phone with trepidation.   Shit, I thought.  I picked it up and dialed.

“Bonjour.  Je m’appelle Elyse.  Vendez-vous les chiots?”  Hi.  My name is Elyse.  Do you sell puppies?  [Yes, I’m quite the French conversationalist.  In English you can’t shut me up.]

“Would you like to speak English?” said the woman on the other end of the line.

“Yes!!!!” I said with tears of relief/delight/I-don’t-have-to-sound-like-a-dope coming to my eyes.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  All I could think of was just how lucky I was to not have to try to negotiate in French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  Or Romanch.  Instead, on the other end of the phone was someone who spoke English!  A woman who could understand me and respond.  A woman with puppies!

“Very good.  I can speak English.  And I have puppies.  Can you visit them tomorrow?”

“Yes!”

A plan was set.  We got directions and headed out the next morning to pick out a puppy!

All the puppies were in a room with some cushions and blankets on the floor.  The three of us made ourselves comfortable and started cuddling puppies.

Jacob picked up the puppy closest to him and put it in his lap the way Madame Carasco, the breeder, showed him, as the puppies were still quite young.  But another puppy waddled over to Jacob, pushed the first puppy off of Jacob’s lap and settled himself down for the long haul with my 7 year old son.  It was the only smart thing that dog has ever done.

“Look!  He loves me Mom!”

“He Loves Me, Mom!”

And then I asked the price.

Cooper is descended from a line of top show dogs that have been winning Swiss and other European competitions for generations, going back to Roman times, I’m pretty sure.  Cooper couldda been a contender.  But I’m not that kind of a girl (and we’re not that kind of a family).  His perfect physique, beautiful coloring and his full (not cut off) tail “showed” only to friends and family.  And he’s never whined once about lost glory.  What a guy!

But he loves me, Mom!

Today is Cooper’s 105th Birthday,  his 15th in human years.  He’s an old man now, a puppy no longer.  His joints are stiff, he can’t walk upstairs by himself these days, and is so blind that he only realizes we have entered or left a room by sniffing the air.

Cooper 3-9-13

You know, in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t ask the price on the phone.  Because Cooper has been well worth every centime.

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Filed under Conspicuous consumption, Cooper, Dogs, Family, Geneva Stories, Humor, Mental Health, Pets

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February 9, 2013 · 0:00

What’s In A Name?

Shakespeare never had a dog.

No, if he’d had a dog he would never have had Juliet say “What’s in a name…”

Because you see, there is something about naming a dog that makes people choose poorly.

I was reminded of just how poorly recently at the park.  John and I were walking our dog Cooper by the river when we came upon a couple with a Giant Schnauzer walking in the opposite direction.  Their dog and Coops had met before, but I hadn’t asked the dog’s name.  This time I did.

“It’s, ummmm …” said the owner with a sigh, “Gladiator.”

I fussed over Gladiator, petted him, let the dogs sniff and even smooch a little bit and then we continued on our way.

As we walked away, I chuckled to John, “Oh I remember feeling like that.”

“Like what?”

“Embarrassed to have to introduce my dog,” I responded, thinking of Goliath, my alcoholic German Shepherd.  (John will never stop laughing at me for having chosen that name.)

It was a stupid name.  And I chose it.  For the first time in my life, I had a pet with a stupid name and I couldn’t blame someone else.

Well, I could, actually.  And I did.  You see, I had brunch with some friends one Sunday.  We were talking about Saturday morning cartoons, what we liked, what we didn’t like when Frank brought up “Davy and Goliath.”  For the folks in the room, Frank described Davy and Goliath:

“It was a Christian-based show where Davy, the boy, always wanted to do something a little bit wrong or dangerous.  His dog, Goliath, served as his guardian angel.  Whenever Davy wanted to do something of questionable intelligence, Goliath was always there saying ‘I don’t know, Davy,’ and tilting his head to indicate that the idea was pretty stupid. “

I realized then and there that I wanted a guardian angel.  I wanted someone who would protect me and stop me from doing stupid things.  I wanted ‘Goliath.’

Fortunately, a few days later, I found him.  My dream dog.  A German-shepherd/Malamute mix puppy who was about 4-1/2 months old.  Trouble was, he was a wee bit psychotic.  And huge.  Unfortunately, I DID name him “Goliath.”  (Goliath I am sad to say became an alcoholic.  I wrote about it here.)

His right ear usually flopped over making him look ridiculous

I loved that dog.  But almost immediately I hated introducing him, because he grew into his name.  He was huge.  And having a huge, psychotic dog named Goliath doesn’t get you into the best parties.

Naturally, I blamed Frank the next time I saw him.  It was, after all, all his fault.

It wasn’t my first experience with a stupid dog name.  Growing up, my father had for reasons nobody ever really understood, named one of our dogs Oklahoma.  None of us had ever been there; we speculated years later that perhaps there was a college football game on TV.  No, Dad would never tell us why, but we had a dog named Oklahoma.  Okie for short.

Next time around, my brother Fred was in his hippie, metaphysical stage.  I will not say that drugs had anything to do with the fact that he named our next dog Klingsor, after a Hermann Hesse novel.  I was always a little bit thankful that the dog’s name wasn’t Siddhartha, although that would have made me a hit with a certain crowd.  Dad, however, in a rich bit of irony from the man who named Oklahoma, thought it was a stupid name and modified it.  Dad always called Klingsor “Mr. Klink,” after the colonel on Hogan’s Heroes.

Klingsor

For sheer embarrassment at the back door, though, my friend Keily had a dog with another ridiculous name.  Her sister had been given the honor of naming their puppy, and Rose thought that she should name it after something she loved.  She named the dog “Baseball.”

Try shouting out any of these names for your dog when you’re calling him to come in from the back yard.  Everybody in the neighborhood hears you calling your dog.  You shout: “OKLAHOMA!” and neighbors want to shoot you because they get that damn song stuck in their heads every single time.  They hear you calling “BASEBALL!” and realize that your family is in a league all their own.  They hear you calling “KLINGSOR!” and think you are having a bad reaction to LSD.  They hear you calling “KLINK!” think you’re looking outside for a TV character and realize that the neighborhood is going to the dogs.

They hear you calling “GOLIATH!” and become convinced that you do, in fact, need a guardian angel.  Or a straight jacket and a padded cell.

As the owner of one of these dogs, you want to hide under a rock.  You want to pretend you’re dog-sitting.  You want to let everybody know that you didn’t give that dog that stupid-ass name, even if you did, in fact, give it to him.

You know how you’re supposed to learn from your mistakes?  Well, dog owners don’t necessarily.

After Goliath died, John and I of course needed a dog.  Jacob was a year old, and we researched big dogs that are good with kids.  We decided to get a Bernese Mountain Dog because they’re great with kids, beautiful, and tend to not try to kill the mailman like Goliath did.

It was of course the olden days.  Before email, the interwebs, and modern communications.  We found a breeder who had a puppy.  She sent a picture to us by mail, to see if we were interested in driving 5 hours to see him in person and possibly take him home.   I ripped open the envelope the minute it arrived and called John:

“He is the cutest puppy in the world.  We have to get him. 

And we have to name him “Adolf.”

I can still imagine John sitting at his office desk, pulling back the telephone receiver and looking into it thinking “I married a mad woman.”

But tell me, what would you have thought if you’d received this picture:

I mean, really now. What would your first thought have been?

I mean, really now. What would your first thought have been?

Fortunately, while still on the phone telling John we had to get the cute little guy, I realized that Charlie Chaplin also sported that same mustache, and so the puppy that we did in fact bring into our family, became Charlie.  Phew!  That was a close one.

To William Shakespeare I will say this.  What’s in a name?  Long term embarrassment if you’re not careful.

***

Loyalty demands that I include a picture of Cooper, my now elderly but still incredibly sweet dog, pictured with his big brother Jacob.  Cooper was, thankfully, named by his breeder.

Jacob & Cooper in Alps

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Filed under Childhood Traumas, Cooper, Dogs, Family, Goliath Stories, Humor, Pets, Stupidity, Wild Beasts

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