The house I grew up in had no pets.
My mother was afraid of dogs and not too fond of cats. It wasn’t like abuse or anything, in fact, I had about sixteen friends that lived within a block of me (Remember, I’m a boomer); and only three of them had pets- all dogs.
My parents were pretty accommodating to the six kids they raised, while they were on a limited budget, they made a real good effort to get us what we asked for, unless it was pets. Then, the answer was no.
I was one of six lobbyists in the household who regularly petitioned the leadership team to budget for a pet. We all failed miserably.
The United Front we were facing did not budge on that one topic. Dad once started his rebuttal statement to me by saying, “Free dogs are not free. I will have to buy him a leash, a bowl, a bed, maybe a crate, food every week, rabies shots, vet visits,” I think he had more to say but mom called him or something and broke his train of thought. He was successful in making his point, eventually, I stopped asking.
There were two times we were able to break them down, at least a little. I was in about first grade when my friend Scott, who lived on the corner, moved. Somehow his mother convinced my mother to take their parakeet, Beau. Beau was a yellow bird and did not speak, but they gave us a recording of a man saying, “Hello baby, want a kiss” that was supposed to get the old bird talking. We played it constantly until my parents couldn’t stand it any longer and the darned old bird never did utter a syllable.
We had beau for about a year and one day my mom found him on the bottom of his cage. He was about 8 when we got him, and that’s the high side of their life span so we had no guilt, but a lot of sadness.
The other chink if my parents armor surfaced when I was a freshman in high school. We, as most freshman biology classes do, hatched eggs as a class project. Our teacher, a savvy teaching professional, allowed us to sign up for a drawing with the “winners” getting one of the hatched chicks. I never win anything, but I put my name in and a few weeks later was one of many students faced with the problem of how to get a live chick home on the school bus.
I named her Bertha and, while I don’t remember any specific details, my mother reluctantly allowed her to stay in my room. It was late in the school year and my sister Polly, and I enjoyed having her for most of the summer. At one point Bertha started crowing in the early morning hours. (I guess sexual identity problems aren’t as new as I thought they were- our female chick decided she was a male). We started to call Bertha Bert, and mom started calling poultry farms to see if any of them would keep Bert until they found something more profitable to do with him.
As I hit adulthood the yearning for a dog never left. I married a girl who also wanted a dog and the rest, as they say, is history.
The girl of my dreams- Eileen, had a four-year-old daughter- Jaime, which just sweetened the pot as far as I was concerned. They would be moving into my small 2-bedroom cape cod style house after we married.
Eileen and Jaime were moving out of a house they shared with five of Eileen’s siblings, her parents and a dog. We were concerned Jaime would suffer from “culture shock” coming from a home where there was always action and commotion to a smaller house with only the three of us. Before the wedding we decided to increase the household “commotion” index by adding a dog.
Eileen, Jaime and I went to several county dog pounds to adopt and, finally, found a beautiful Siberian Huskey/Malamute mix. Her name was Brandy and I watched her until Jaime and Eileen moved in. She was beautiful with one brown eye and one blue. I took her jogging every day and she would run with her nose in the air, enjoying the smells of bar-b-que’s, restaurants and other dogs.
It didn’t take long until Brandy started to show signs of a trait, unbeknownst to me, Huskies are known for. She started to escape!
No matter what I did she would get out of the yard. I only had her for a few weeks but, in that time, I had to track her down about 4 times. Luckily, I had nothing going at three of those times and I was able to track her down. The fourth time, unfortunately, was my wedding day.
When I have morning plans, ordinarily, I get up with just enough time to eat, shower, dress and get out the door. Since this was such a special day, I got up real early. I took Brandy for a run, put her in the yard, and went upstairs to shower. I still had about an hour before I needed to dress so I sat down to have a leisurely breakfast and read the paper. I glanced out the window to see if Brandy was ready to come in. She wasn’t the yard! OH! That female dog!
I guess I am just not the type of person who is allowed to have leisurely breakfasts!
I ran out to my pick up truck and started driving to all the places I had found her, or she had strained to greet another dog. Up an down every street in the area. I had already spent way too much time searching. I would have no choice but to go home and get dressed soon. I couldn’t call any friends to continue the search- they were all invited to the wedding! Finally, ten minutes after I should have been dressing, Brandy popped out of a backyard as happy to see me as she ever has been. She jumped in the truck oblivious to the fact that she had almost ruined my life, or at least my day.
After Eileen and Jaime moved in the problem persisted and we had to start putting money aside to pay fines to the village we lived in to retrieve her from their dog pound.
When Eileen was pregnant with our second child, we had to move to an apartment to have enough room for our growing family and we were forced to give Brandy to friends who owned a farm.
As our story continued, we almost always had a dog in the house. Currently, we have Centry, a mixed breed, and Brody, a Labradoodle. They are both wonderful and always, make that almost always, make me feel loved.
I titled this, “IT’S A DOG’S LIFE, IF YOU’RE LUCKY!” Because our dogs, the same as all of my friends’ dogs, are treated better than we treat ourselves.
When I had hair, awhile back, we were spending more money to groom the pets than to groom me. We buy them special treats, food, food additives, if they sneeze, they go right to the vet. If I sneeze somebody, might, give me a tissue!
If the dog gets in the bed first, I might end up sleeping on the couch because “We don’t want to upset the puppy.” If the dog gets in the bed after you, he will, most likely. keep moving into your “space” until you are forced to flee to the couch. If he’s well trained, he goes where you tell him to go. If he’s not, you might end up with some uncomfortable nights, but one thing is for certain. When your dog is with you, you will love him. When your dog must leave you, you will mourn like he was one of the family, because he was!
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