by Colleen Sell
But he didn't make a move. Instead, he laid there suffering her enthusiastic teething. Stunned by his submissive behavior, I belatedly came to his rescue and pried Taylor from his head while reprimanding her. Before she could tackle him again, I gave each of them a doggie cookie. Once more the little dog was too fast as she greedily grabbed both treats and landed, spread-eagle, on Rhett's back to demolish them. Rhett had always enjoyed those biscuits, and I expected some sort of retaliation for the young mutt's thievery. Rhett, however, appeared not to mind. In fact, he seemed almost glad for the momentary respite he got while she crunched in a puppy-feeding frenzy. When I sympathetically offered Rhett a replacement treat, he openly let Taylor steal it.
Thirty minutes in the household, and Taylor had proved to be not only totally un-girly, but also bold and territorial. Fifteen minutes after that, we learned she hadn't been potty trained yet. Finally, Rhett stood up. He neared the offensive pile as if it were the most disgusting thing he'd ever witnessed. When Taylor tried to avert his attention by nipping at his tail, he lifted it out of her reach and stood stock still. His eyes bore into hers. Every time she tried to look away, he got into her face, made her pay attention. It worked. Chastised, Taylor's happy tail drooped, her head bowed heartbreakingly low. Rhett walked regally to the door and gave a discreet grunt, signaling to me that he wanted out. The puppy, head still lowered, followed him outside and watched attentively as Rhett did his business. Patiently, he waited for her to do the same. She did. Taylor never forgot her lesson and never again made a mess inside the house. Never.
“Good boy, Rhett.” I scratched his chin, rewarding him for a job well done. I was relieved he'd made his stand.
A heartbeat later, though, Taylor knocked his head out of the way so that she could receive this praise as well. I scooped her up in one arm, anxious to pet my old mistreated dog. But he had already collapsed in an exhausted heap, where he remained for an hour or so, too tired to do anything else.
During the next few days, Taylor continued on her merry, “Rhett-abusing way.” Her favorite pastime was attacking the big, dominate male until she fell asleep on his ribs. True to his nature, Rhett would simply lie there, afraid to move. She slobbered on his toys; she pushed him around until I wanted to howl. She ran him ragged and grabbed all the attention for herself. She kept all the cookies too.
Repeatedly, I told Rhett, even showed him how, to tell Taylor no, to push her back, to be forceful and in control. But he refused. The last straw for me came when I realized that she was taking his food as well. The instant I put down food for them, she would race between Rhett's legs, gobble his grownup food in a trice, then duck back under his stomach and proceed to wolf down her puppy chow. Again, I told Rhett to show some muscle; again he refused. I called the vet.
“Don't worry,” the vet assured me. “Let them go. Just don't give Rhett any extra food. Once he gets hungry enough, he'll step on her toes and teach her to behave.”
Fine. I gave the family strict instructions that under no circumstances whatsoever were they to give Rhett any munchies. There was to be no “accidentally on purpose” meat droppings at the dinner table; no “Oh, that ham sandwich slipped out of my fingers!” I was adamant: No food for Rhett except his usual kibble. His big, soulful, brown eyes made it hard to be strong, but I was.
Despite my vigilance, this ruse backfired too. Now the big dominant male didn't even bother to go to his bowl; he just flopped down in the hallway and watched the little monster pup gobble every morsel in sight. It was true that this self-imposed diet was trimming Rhett's roly-poly physique a bit. That and the extra puppy-inspired exercise were undoubtedly healthy for him. Meanwhile, though, Taylor was developing a belly that nearly dragged on the floor, and she could barely run.
I didn't understand what was happening, until one day my son declared that we'd run out of hot dogs. He didn't even like hot dogs! When my husband responded to the announcement as if the end of the world was near, I saw the light. Before they could race out the door to the grocery, I called a family meeting.
“You guys are feeding Rhett, aren't you?”
Three heads bowed in shame. Even Rhett looked guilty. Taylor was too busy biting Rhett's ankles to notice.
“Okay, that does it!” I growled, angrily. “From now on, I'm in charge of all things dog in this house.”
I was brutal too. When Taylor nudged Rhett out of his bed, I shoved her out onto the cold kitchen floor. When she chewed his ears till mine hurt, I unlocked her jaw and snarled in her face. When she stole his cookies, I yanked them out of her mouth and threw them in the trash. Now, at last, it was Taylor who didn't know what hit her. In a few short hours, she learned to ease up on Rhett and to respect me. Of course, the true test came that evening at suppertime.
As usual, I filled two bowls, one with puppy chow and the other with senior dog food. Bracing myself against Taylor's exuberant nosh fest, I set the dishes on the floor. The instant Taylor stuck her nose into Rhett's bowl, I grabbed her and lugged her startled, fat body into the middle of the room — far away from the food. A nanosecond later, she waddled back.
“Taylor, no!” I hollered. “No food! No, Taylor, no!” I flattened her tubby rump onto the floor and made her sit and stay. She whimpered and wiggled, but I refused to let her up. Once she understood, I marched over to Rhett, where he lay terrified by my unaccustomed loudness. I yanked him up and literally had to drag him to his dinner. Honestly, I had to force the chunks of kibble into his mouth. When he finally took a few bites on his own, I petted him profusely, praising the heck out of him. “Rhett, eat. Good boy, Rhett. Eat your good food.”
Taylor, thinking everything was back to normal, started toward us, and I nailed her again. “Taylor! Bad dog. Sit.”
And she did. Sure, she worried and wobbled and wagged her tail, but she didn't get up. I was feeling pretty cocky. Rhett was eating, Taylor was waiting, and I was tougher than I ever dreamed I could be.
Then an odd thing happened. Rhett took a huge, cheek-puffing mouthful of food. There was so much kibble stuffed into his mouth that his face ballooned out over his lips. Slowly, he walked over to Taylor, fixed his compassionate golden retriever eyes on me, and then spat the whole soggy mess onto the floor in front of his chubby little buddy. She impatiently awaited my signal but didn't move.
“Rhett,” I explained, nearly pleading with him. “You have to eat. Human food is not good for you, and too much of any food isn't good for the puppy.”
But his eyes told a different story. They seemed to say, “She's a baby. How can we expect her to grow up big and strong, if we don't give her everything she needs?”
“That's true,” I nodded in empathy. “Still, you need to eat too. We must teach her to share.”
Call me crazy, but I swear he agreed with my logic. I patted him on the head and let the ravenous Taylor consume the food Rhett had given her. Rhett sighed heavily and flopped on the floor.
It took about three months before I could trust Taylor and Rhett to eat alone properly. During that time, my daughter and I took turns feeding the dogs by standing guard between them until Rhett had eaten his fill. Only then did we allow Taylor to finish up his leftovers. And that big dominate male always left plenty.
˜Loy Michael Cerf
Some Kind of Wonderful
What kind of dog is that?” I'm often asked when I have my Furry Murry out in public.
“He's a ditz,” I usually say.
When choosing a dog, my husband's allergies required we get a non-shedding breed. We picked a soft-coated wheaten terrier, a breed touted for its hypoallergenic coat and for being both “intelligent and exuberant.” Although our wheaten makes exuberance an art form, he is by no means an intellectual.
How this dumb but lovable creature came to be a part of our family is hard to explain. Even though I've been a dog lover all my life, I knew I shouldn't have one. Not with my yard so small and my schedule so hectic and my commute to work so long. It just didn't make sense. For
years, I would make do by visiting my parents' pooches and occasionally coaxing neighborhood dogs in for a snack and a scratch.
Then, in an instant, my life was turned upside down in the worst possible way. And even though my yard was still small and my schedule still hectic and my commute just as far, I realized a dog was exactly what we needed.
Perhaps Murry's goofiness was something we needed too.
Murry is bright enough that he understands many words, but he suffers from a condition called “selective deafness.” (A condition that afflicts only males and is not restricted to canines.) Calling Murry's name when food is involved enables him to transport himself in Star Trek-like fashion from wherever he is to wherever I am. I can whisper his name, and he hears and arrives instantaneously. But call his name repeatedly and at full volume when it's time to leave for work, and the deafness strikes. He pretends to be sleeping, eyes squeezed tightly shut, like a child feigning sleep, apparently thinking, “She won't want to disturb me.”
But disturb him I do, regularly carrying his limp body to the sunroom for the day, lest he eat the house while we're gone. You see, along with Murry's selective deafness is another condition, one that causes phrases I speak to be interpreted completely opposite of how they're intended. For example:
What I say: “Stay out of my closet, Murry. Do not eat my shoes.”
What Murry hears: “Welcome to the smorgasbord. Our special this evening is black leather pumps.”
Although I've had many dogs in my life, I was still somewhat naive about the amount of dirt a longhaired four-legger would add. I didn't realize it meant I'd be spending the next fifteen years or so gradually transferring all the dirt and leaves from my backyard to a landfill — one vacuum cleaner bag at a time.
Freshly bathed, Murry resembles an experiment in electrocution gone wrong. Described by my daughter as having “happy hair,” he looks like one of the Muppets. Although he's only 40-ish pounds (heavy on the “ish”), Murry's paws are tremendous, each about the size of a mop-head. Each autumn he uses those paws to redistribute leaves from outside to inside, four furry mop-head pawfuls at a time.
Although there's more dirt in the house since Murry arrived, there's also more laughter. Much more. While I wouldn't say it's impossible to be depressed with him around, it's definitely not easy to stay that way. He's brought such companionship and devotion. And pain.
Much like my dog, I'm neither graceful nor coordinated. This I generally blame on my feet. If I were tall, their largeness might make sense, but since I'm not, my long, narrow feet make me look like I'm preparing to ski. Because I've been maneuvering through life on these ski-feet for forty-two years, some might suppose me to be a natural at hitting the slopes. But that's where my lack of coordination comes into play.
The slope I recently faced wasn't in some luxurious ski resort, but rather my own backyard, which is a series of upward slopes. My backdoor opens onto a small deck, which is at the base of a steep incline about a dozen feet high. The yard is briefly level, then shoots steeply upward again. In the summer, it's a real joy to mow, made even more joyful by a drainage problem that's been turning parts of the yard into a swamp.
In the winter, it's even better. It's ice.
Okay, so we've got an uncoordinated person with big feet and a steep backyard that's both swampy and icy. What else do we need? A dog. A big, shaggy, dumb dog.
As I mentioned earlier, Murry was blessed with the gift of enthusiasm. He leaps into life. In fact, he leaps everywhere. Sometimes just looking at him causes him to pop straight off the ground into the air. There's no method to his madness. It's simply madness.
One recent morning, before daylight, I put Murry out back on his lead-line, which runs from the house far up onto the hill. As our yard is always heavily shaded, it was still frozen in spots in spite of recent warming. Murry barreled across the ice, up the steepest slope, to the top, then inexplicably popped into the air and got his lead-line tangled in a bush. He tried to free himself but to no avail. He was hopelessly stuck.
I begrudgingly added a coat to my nightgown-and-slipper ensemble, then headed up to rescue Murry. The icy ground crunched and sunk under each step. Frozen on top, mud underneath. Its softness made climbing the grade manageable, in spite of the ice. I soon reached and freed Murry, who showed his appreciation by going airborne again. Unfortunately, instead of a bush, this time Murry tangled in me, knocking me onto my backside. At the top of a steep, muddy, icy slope.
I shot down that slope at speeds rivaling those of an Olympic bobsledding team, going so fast that once I reached the level area, I barely slowed before heading down the next slope and into the rail of my deck. Mud and ice filled the back of my nightgown, oozed from my shoes, matted my hair.
When I finally came to a stop, I struggled to my feet and looked up at the hill from whence I'd just come, and saw that in my wake, I'd left a trench. A butt rut.
In the days after my rapid descent through my yard, I noticed my impromptu trenching project seemed to have diverted ground water from running onto my deck. While it didn't completely fix the problem, I'm thinking a few more runs down the pike might do the trick. It was, you realize, a coordinated effort. From two who are not.
Although I've spent many words on the many messy and maddening moments with Murry, I'm as devoted to him as he is to me. I have only one regret: I wish he hadn't come from a breeder. I wish I could say that I saved him from a shelter or a neglectful owner or impending death on a freeway. I wish we'd come together in some dramatic way, because then we'd be even. But we aren't.
Murry was the one who saved me. He saved me from sorrow. Saved my little girl too. Taught both of us how to laugh and love all over again. Before Murry came, our house had become too quiet, too sad. Celeste and I were both deep in mourning over the death of my second-born, six-month-old daughter, followed a few weeks later by my husband moving out.
In the weeks that followed, Celeste distracted herself with school, dance class, and friends, while I stumbled around, trying to immerse myself in work and a million suddenly urgent projects around the house. But even with my hammering and Celeste's nonstop chatter, there was an underlying quiet. A missing, sweet commotion.
A solution seemed suddenly obvious. We needed a dog.
When an aunt called to see how we were doing, she said those oft-spoken words, “Is there anything we can do?”
I think I surprised her by saying there was. “Find us a puppy like yours.”
Before I knew it, the bouncing tan fur ball was here.
From the very beginning, Murry was everything I could have hoped for — affectionate, gentle, and endlessly patient. Best of all, though, was how he forced us to laugh. Laughter was still so painful back then. Before Murry, on the rare occasions when I'd catch myself laughing, guilt would set in. It felt wrong to enjoy anything. Other times the laughter felt false, like something I made myself do so my friends would think I was fine.
But hearing Celeste's genuine giggle as our pooch rolled her about on the floor, watching that high-stepping, clumsy puppy prance as he followed us from room to room, and getting nuzzled by a cold nose and sloppy wet muzzle forced smiles that weren't fake.
No matter how wonderful the dog, it can never take the place of a child. But in losing Camille, I learned that when you do manage to find something good, you should hold on to it as tightly as you can. Murry certainly doesn't seem to mind all the holding. Something I could never say about our fish.
˜Karin Fuller
The Major
My gran was clearly the boss of not only eight-year-old me and my younger brother, Tommy, but also of our mom and dad too. At almost five feet tall and barely 100 pounds, she was the lieutenant of the household ranks and of the world at large. Neighbors and shopkeepers would not dare to contradict Gran. Behind her back, we all clicked our heels and saluted her. She'd earned the commission.
At nine years old and knowing not a word of English, Gran began spinning cotton in the Amoskea
g Mills in Manchester, New Hampshire. She'd also lived through the Great Depression. She was widely admired for her compassion, intelligence, industriousness, organization, resourcefulness, and pragmatism. According to Gran, the worst sins were laziness and waste. She'd have neither in her household.
Gran never actually said no to anything. Instead, she would fiercely ask, “Are you crazy?”
And a pet was out of the question. After all, animals eat, and that costs money. A dog in the house? She'd never heard of such a wasteful and inconvenient proposal. Who would pay for its food? Who would train it and walk it? Dogs had their place and usefulness on farms, as shepherds or as watchdogs, guarding chicken coops. Just because the neighbors were wasteful and silly and kept a dog in a city apartment didn't give us cause to indulge in the same frivolousness. Then it came: “Are you crazy?”And that was that. It was no use appealing to Mom and Dad. Tommy and I knew it was all over, and we hoisted the white flag.
Gran pounded on the door and hollered, “Let me in.” We figured she'd misplaced her key. So when she lugged an injured puppy into the kitchen, Tommy and I didn't know what to think.
“Tossed out of the car window. They threw him like a sack of trash and sped off. Poor little runt, and with a bum leg. Lord have mercy.” She grabbed a blanket and prepared a bowl of cream of wheat and patted him down with a towel. “And in the rain. How can people sink so low?”
Tommy and I couldn't say a word. It seemed like a dream.
“Priscilla, get a bowl of water and some newspapers.” I was dumbfounded. “Now. Move, missy!”
A telephone, of course, was also wasteful and unnecessary. It was late, so Gran decided she would wait until morning to go to Simione's store and use the pay phone to call the Angell Memorial Animal Rescue League of Boston. Her friend Alice sent some kittens there last summer, and they even picked them up in a van. No charge. It couldn't be easier.
Next morning she asked Alice how long it took to place the kittens and was surprised when Alice said, “Oh, only the bright orange, striped one was placed. They had to kill the other two, the puny ones. You know, with a shot.” Gran's face drained and Alice assured her, “Marie, don't worry. They don't charge for it.” Still, the color didn't restore to Gran's face.